


Within A Garden Fair

by nagi_schwarz



Category: Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, M/M, Minor Character Death, Stealth Crossover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-26
Updated: 2018-08-26
Packaged: 2019-07-02 17:17:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 32,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15801066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: AU after the SG-1 ep Hathor. Hathor is the new Goddess on Earth, having conquered the entire planet after she took over the SGC. Rodney McKay is one of her chief scientists, tasked with unlocking Ancient technology so she can wage war on the other system lords. When he's given John Sheppard and Evan Lorne as lab assistants, his already tenuous existence takes a turn for the dangerous - and the better.





	Within A Garden Fair

Rodney stared at the unintelligible data readouts and felt dread curl low and heavy in his gut. The Goddess would not be pleased if he didn’t figure out how to convert this Ancient tech over to Goa’uld use. Hathor was looking to build herself back up among the System Lords, and Ancient tech was going to be her edge.

He heard the heavy, rhythmic footfalls of Jaffa in the corridor outside the lab and wondered if somehow Hathor knew he wasn’t equal to the task she’d set him, that death was on his doorstep.

But then a man said, “Hey, take it easy!”

Rodney spun, startled.

Jaffa marched into the lab. Four of them escorted two men between them, both of them in the pale, scrub-like uniforms Hathor had commanded that servants of a certain class wear. One of the men was lean, slender, with wild dark hair and bright dark eyes. The other man was stockier, broad across the shoulders, with bright blue eyes and dark brown hair.

“Dr. McKay,” one of the Jaffa said. “You shall have assistance. Your Goddess wills it.”

“Tell the Goddess I am grateful,” Rodney said, lowering his chin deferentially and hating it.

The dark-eyed man was looking around the lab, eyes bright with interest. He was beautiful. Rodney was surprised Hathor hadn’t kept the man for herself, drugged him with Nish’ta and used him for breeding. Daniel Jackson had the dubious honor of being Hathor’s perpetually-drugged consort, but someone like Hathor who considered herself a deity hardly believed in anything like fidelity.

The blue-eyed man stood still, gaze averted downward.

The Jaffa nodded, barked out some command that ended in _kree!,_ and all the Jaffa left the lab.

Rodney waited till their footsteps faded, counted to fifteen, then stepped closer to the two men and lowered his voice.

“Are you two actually useful?”

“Depends on what you’re doing,” the dark-eyed man said.

“I’m trying to figure out how to make this Ancient tech work for people without the ATA Gene.” Rodney prodded what Carson had told him was an Ancient night-light but would serve as a baseline for figuring out why the ATA Gene even made Ancient tech work. “What did you two do before?”

“I was an Air Force chopper pilot,” the dark-eyed man said.

Great. A stupid, likely violent moron. Or perhaps a weak-willed one, given that Hathor had turned a select few - like Jack O’Neill - into Jaffa and then killed the rest who’d resisted her conquering of Planet Earth.

“I was a Painter in the Garden of the Goddess,” the blue-eyed man said. He still hadn’t made real eye-contact with Rodney.

It took Rodney a couple of seconds to understand what he meant, because Hathor, in all her glory, had decided to implement something greatly resembling Newspeak. Daniel Jackson was a linguist in addition to being an anthropologist and archaeologist, and he’d aided her effort in renaming even the dumbest things so they sounded grander, so they emphasized Hathor’s greatness and humanity’s insignificance in comparison.

The Garden of the Goddess was her massive pleasure palace, where the Earthly delights were people and entertainment instead of plants and flowers and fruit. Unless Hathor wanted someone to paint the roses red or some other ridiculous -

Right. The attractions were people. People had to be made up to look pretty.

“You’re a makeup artist,” Rodney said flatly.

The man nodded.

“What are your names?”

“John Sheppard,” messy-haired and sexy and already going to be irritating said.

“Evan Lorne,” the diffident makeup artist said.

Rodney sighed. Both of them were useless. To Evan he said, “You, get me some coffee,” and to John, “You - clean off the whiteboard. I need space for my calculations.”

Evan nodded and ducked out of the lab.

John eyed the whiteboard. “Want me to copy anything down before I wipe it all away?”

Rodney was tempted to say no, because even though he was no soldier, no fighter, he wasn’t going down easily, and tiny mistakes that set his projects back long-term were his way of resisting Hathor’s efforts to conquer the galaxy. But Hathor didn’t take failure well, as evidenced by Bill Lee’s head on a pike just outside the elevator on the main laboratory floor.

“Copy it all down,” Rodney said. That way a record was kept but no one but him would be able to decipher it. As long as he was indispensable to Hathor, he stayed alive.

John nodded, and he poked around the lab till he found an old lab notebook, and then he set about copying down what was on the whiteboard. He paused partway through, frowned, looked like he wanted to say something.

“What?” Rodney asked, wary. He should have been working instead of staring at his new lab minion, no matter how attractive the man was.

“Nothing,” John said finally, and kept on writing.

Evan returned with what looked like a porcelain tea service, only instead of delicate china teacups he had coffee mugs and a carafe of coffee.

“How do you like your coffee?” He looked at Rodney expectantly.

“Cream. One sugar.”

Evan nodded and set about fixing his coffee. “What about you, Sheppard?”

“Black,” he said.

Evan handed Rodney his coffee first, then poured a mug for John, and finally poured a mug for himself. He also took it black.

Rodney sipped the coffee. “Less cream, more sugar next time.”

Evan nodded. “What else can I do for you?”

Rodney considered. Basically he’d been given a glorified maid and a secretary. “Tidy this place up a bit. Don’t throw anything away, but - some things might be trash. Use your judgment.” He stopped short of saying he trusted the man, because he trusted no one.

Were they plants from Hathor, there to spy on him? They were both handsome, the kind of handsome she liked to keep to herself.

But Evan nodded again and headed over to the workbench on the far side of the lab and set to work. He wasn’t a complete moron, then - he’d picked a spot to start that would keep him out of Rodney’s way.

Once John was finished copying everything down, Evan cleaned off the whiteboard, and Rodney had John help him take measurements of the Ancient device.

“We need a good diagram of it,” Rodney said. Sure, they could have used digital cameras, but thankfully Hathor’s general disdain for humans and their stupidity meant she didn’t notice when they were being stupider than usual, for the most part. She expected them to be slow and backwards even if they had defeated Ra (which wasn’t that impressive; bronze-age desert slaves had done that), so Rodney played the part.

“If I may,” Evan said, “I’m probably better for diagramming than Sheppard is.”

John, who’d drawn an oval that only vaguely resembled the outline of the Ancient night light, raised his eyebrows. “Really?”

“Like I said, I used to be a Painter.” Evan crossed the lab, stood beside John. “May I?”

John handed him the notebook and pen.

Rodney watched, impressed but unwilling to admit it, as a rendition of the Ancient night light came to life on the page. Evan drew the image again on the opposite page.

“Why are you drawing two?” John asked.

“One to diagram parts, one to record measurements,” Evan said.

That was actually very practical, something a scientist or engineer would think of. What had Evan done, Before? He couldn’t have always been a Painter, could he? Unless he’d been such a good Painter that the Goddess had kept him and his skills for herself.

Rodney said, “You, Evan, stay with me. John, Sheppard, whatever you want to be called, you finish cleaning.”

John cast Evan a look Rodney couldn’t decipher, then went over to where Evan had started tidying up. Rodney found his calipers and set about measuring the device again as best as he could. Evan recorded the measurements in the notebook dutifully. He said little. Together he and Rodney labeled what parts of the device they could identify. Rodney ran the device through the x-ray machine, and using the image displayed there, Evan made two more diagrams, for more measurements and parts.

At midday Evan was the one who set down his pen.

Rodney frowned. “What are you doing?”

“It’s lunch time.”

“So?”

“So you’re hypoglycemic. I’ll go get us some food. Sheppard can continue to help you.”

Rodney stared at him. “Why do you know that?”

“We’re here to help you, and that means making sure you’re taken care of,” Evan said firmly. He left the lab.

Rodney watched him go, suspicious. The only person who knew about his hypoglycemia was Carson, because he was the base doctor after Janet had been killed in the initial Conquering. Rodney hadn’t wanted anyone to know about his medical issues lest they be used against him.

“Need to take more measurements?” John asked.

Rodney started.

John had just appeared beside him. He had the notebook and pen in hand. The other end of the lab looked neater. John had sorted things into piles, dusted where he could. It would be up to Rodney to figure out what was trash and what was worth keeping. Some trash he’d keep to misdirect anyone who came snooping through his lab.

“Sure,” Rodney said. “More measurements.” He switched on the electronic calipers, and John set to writing and recording.

An hour later, Evan returned bearing a tray laden with food for three.

Rodney stared at the plate decorated with little animals and flowers that were actually fruit, vegetables, and meat. “What the hell is this?” It looked like a meal for a toddler.

“Bento,” Evan said. The turkey sandwich he handed John looked perfectly grown-up. It had a pickle and baked potato chips for sides. Evan had a grilled chicken salad for himself.

“Is it edible?” Rodney asked. “Or is it art?”

“It’s Japanese for ‘lunch’,” John said, taking a bite of his sandwich. “I was stationed in Japan for a while. It’s traditional to make them cute like that. To entice kids to eat them.”

“I’m not a kid,” Rodney said.

John cast Evan a look and added, “Or sometimes girls make them for boys they’re trying to woo.”

“It’s a balanced meal and it’s citrus-free,” Evan said, unmoved by John’s innuendo.

Rodney, who’d reached for the lion-faced piece of ham and cheese, paused. “Why?”

Evan’s expression turned hesitant. “Because you hate citrus, I thought. Was I wrong? I was going to add lemon slices, but -”

“No, that’s correct,” Rodney said. Who was telling Evan about his food preferences?

“How’d you get turkey?” John asked.

“I have a good relationship with the chef who runs the kitchens now,” Evan said.

Perhaps that was where Evan had learned Rodney’s food preferences. He’d disguised his allergy as a diva-style dislike of anything citrus, and the chefs indulged him because, even though he hated it, he was important to the Goddess.

John eyed him some more. “Where did you learn how to make bento?”

“My friend Miko taught me.” Evan forked up his own salad very primly.

Rodney sobered at the sound of a familiar name. Evan probably meant a different Miko, but Rodney had fond memories of Miko Kusanagi. In the initial Conquering, Hathor had drugged any straight man she saw, killed any woman who resisted, and also bombed the hell out of countries that she deemed useless. Because she’d drugged a bunch of American military officers first, she’d bombed the hell out of a lot of countries that were considered America’s enemies. Countries considered America’s allies were spared. Countries that were on the fence rose and fell on a whim.

Miko Kusanagi had managed to get both Japan and Korea spared by judicious application of Korean pop music. She’d showed Hathor some random Korean pop music video set to a song sung, bafflingly, in Japanese, and Hathor had been so entranced that she’d agreed to spare both countries. On the condition that they sent her fresh entertainment constantly.

Most of the performers in the Garden of the Goddess were pretty Korean and Japanese boys and girls.

Maybe Rodney and Evan knew the same Miko, if Miko supplied entertainers for the Garden and Evan was the one who painted them. Rodney hadn’t seen Miko in a long time, didn’t know if she was even still alive despite the service she’d provided to the Goddess.

Rodney nibbled on a fruit-and-vegetable flower. “This is actually really good.”

Evan said, “My Nan trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris when she was young. She taught me everything she knew.”

No one talked about their families unless their families were dead, couldn’t be used as leverage against them.

Rodney supposed he ought to be grateful, that Hathor had seen fit to bestow him with two minions with useful, even luxurious skills. He wondered what other skills John had.

After lunch, Evan took all of their empty dishes back to the kitchen, reappeared with more coffee, and continued cleaning, while Rodney took another stab at the unintelligible data readouts.

“What does it mean?” John asked.

Rodney sighed. “I don’t know. Other than if I don’t figure it out soon, the Goddess will lose patience and I’ll end up like Bill.”

“Bill?” John asked.

He was beautiful but stupid.

“Dr. Bill Lee,” Evan said. “His head is just outside the elevators.”

John raised his eyebrows, wary of Evan’s calm tone. “That doesn’t freak you out?”

Evan’s tone was still calm, but Rodney could see his shoulders were tight. “Bill wasn’t a bad guy. Brilliant, even. His kids loved the Disney cartoon _101 Dalmatians._ But he wasn’t brilliant enough just one time, just one day, and now he’s dead. Could happen to any of us. What’s the point in dwelling on things?”

Evan wasn’t calm, Rodney realized. He was dead inside.

*

Even if Evan was dead inside, he was very orderly and organized. Rodney liked his lab and instruments and workspaces organized in a certain way that made his work more efficient, but Evan was organized on a more global level.

John had looked nonplussed the next morning when Evan herded them into the lab, but he cheered up considerably when Evan brought them all breakfast: bacon and eggs and sausage, milk for him and Rodney, apple juice for John (“No orange, remember?”). Wherever Evan and John slept - probably in the barracks with the other minions; Rodney had on-base quarters of his own, quarters that were guarded all night and were actually his jail cell - Evan managed to get both of them to the lab at the same time every morning, bright and early, to have breakfast together.

Then they’d set to work, Evan making diagrams of the device, marking down measurements. John helped Rodney experiment with the Ancient night light. They were trying to run current through it to activate it directly, experimenting with various levels of current and energy, and also what parts of the night light they were trying to connect to. The surface of the device was opaque, but based on the X-ray scans they could see the components inside, were trying to trigger some of those so the device would light up.

They worked till lunch, and Evan would bring them more fresh food. Rodney suspected that only Hathor herself was eating better than them - when she bothered to eat at all. Rodney was gratified when Evan also made childish bento lunches for John and himself, so he wasn’t the only one being subject to condescending meals (after some consideration, he thought maybe Evan was just trying to be nice, though that was suspicious if Evan was dead inside).

After lunch, they would work till supper, and Evan would fetch them supper. They would eat together, have after-dinner coffee, and work until about an hour before bedtime, and then go their separate ways.

Rodney was confused, after nearly a week together, when their routine was disrupted.

“I have to go check on the Flowers in the Garden,” Evan said. “The Painter who replaced me is less experienced.”

Rodney stared at him. “But - what am I going to do without you?”

Evan stared back at him. “You worked well without me before.” To John he said, “First Prime O’Neill wants to see you.”

John raised his eyebrows. “Me?”

Evan nodded.

That couldn’t be good. Rodney protested. “But -”

“It’s Saturday, Doc,” Evan said. “Take half a day.”

“Saturday?” Rodney echoed. So long under the Mountain, with only the clocks to guide him, made him lose sense of time.

Evan added, “Get some sun. You look pale.” He clapped Rodney on the shoulder, nodded at John, and turned to go.

John flashed Rodney a grin. “I’m sure everything is fine. I’ll be back on deck for you tomorrow.” And he also left the lab.

Rodney didn’t know what to do with himself. Sure, he could keep on working alone like he had before, but...how was he going to get supper? Who was going to entertain him with their incompetence and stupidity? Had it really only been a week since Jaffa had delivered Evan and John to him?

Now that he thought about it, why did Evan and John get to roam freely on the base? Why weren’t Jaffa always escorting them around? Why would First Prime O’Neill summon John like that? Unless John worked for him.

Was a Collaborator. Not that Rodney was part of any Resistance but -

“Hello, Rodney.” Carson jolted Rodney out of his thoughts.

“Oh. Carson. Hey.” Rodney didn’t even attempt to smile. “What’s up?”

“I’m sorry I haven’t come by sooner - I’ve been quite busy in the med lab.” Carson smiled, stepped into the lab, sat down on one of the stools beside the work bench. “I just wanted to check in and see if Sheppard and Lorne have been any help.”

“They’ve been very helpful,” Rodney said. So Carson had sent them to him. Maybe that was why Evan knew Rodney’s food preferences. In fact, his food mothering did smack of Carson’s constant fretting over Rodney’s blood pressure and blood sugar and the like.

“Excellent. After First Prime O’Neill and I, they’re the two strongest ATA Gene carriers we’ve been able to find,” Carson said.

Rodney paused. Gene carriers? John and Evan had the Gene? They hadn’t said anything about it, seemed just as puzzled as to why they were in Rodney’s lab as Rodney had been. It would explain why Evan, as important as he was to the Goddess in her Garden, had been pulled out of the Garden and sent to the lab. It also explained why John, who was apparently on conversational terms with First Prime O’Neill and had utility in combat, had also been sent to the lab.

What Rodney didn’t know was why neither man had told him they had the Gene.

And then he realized. They were part of the Resistance. Their not telling him was a massive wrench in Hathor’s plans to make Ancient Tech more Goa’uld-friendly.

The next time he saw them, he’d talk to them about the issue. He was pretty sure his lab was bugged, but he’d developed the habit of occasionally listening to music very loud, which meant if he turned on the 1812 Overture at top volume to cover a conversation, no one listening in would be suspicious. If they were part of the Resistance, and if Ancient tech worked for them, that could be the edge the Resistance needed to work on overthrowing Hathor - or at the very least escaping her and getting assistance from some offworld allies.

Not that Rodney was part of the Resistance, even if there was an organized resistance at all. He was a realist, not an optimist or idealist.

Of course, if Carson had sent John and Evan to him knowing they were Gene carriers, certainly the Goddess knew as well, would be suspicious if Rodney continued to make little progress on his project. Yes, Carson looked out for Rodney, but somehow Carson’s mother had survived the Conquering, and Carson’s first priority was her continued survival and safety. Carson wouldn’t be any help if John and Evan were part of some kind of organized resistance.

The next time Rodney saw them, he’d definitely start educating them in his taste in music, because he liked to work to music sometimes.

But he didn’t see them the rest of that day, or the next day, which was officially his rest day.

He didn’t see either of them till Monday morning, when they arrived at the usual breakfast time, the two of them together, Evan bearing a tray of food.

Rodney did his best to stay calm, act like nothing was wrong. He inquired after their wellbeing. Evan reported he was fine and all was well in the Garden. John’s answer was more vague - he didn’t say anything about his conversation with First Prime O’Neill, just smiled enigmatically and asked after Rodney’s down time.

“It was rejuvenating,” Rodney said, sipping his perfectly-prepared coffee. “I got to see one of my old friends for the first time in a while. Carson, the base medic. Do you know him?”

“Of him,” Evan said.

John added, “I wouldn’t call us friends.” He glanced at Evan. “I wouldn’t call you my friend either.”

Rodney was pretty sure John was joking, but Evan seemed unmoved.

“Carson reminded me about how much I enjoy classical music, so how about some Tchaikovsky?”

“So long as it’s not Swan Lake, we’re good,” John said. So he knew his Tchaikovsky. Interesting.

Evan carried the dishes back to the kitchen, and after he returned Rodney outlined his plans for the day. Then he fired up his CD player, turned on the 1812 Overture, and cranked it up loud.

John raised his eyebrows. Evan, still unmoved, set to work tidying the far workbench. Rodney followed him, caught him by the wrist, tugged.

Evan looked up, surprised, but then he acquiesced and let Rodney tow him back across the lab to where John was standing. Rodney tugged John in close.

John said, in Rodney’s ear, “I’m not kissing you. Or him.”

Rodney said, “I know you both have the Gene.”

The amused smirk slid off of John’s face.

Evan said nothing.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rodney asked.

Evan shrugged. “You didn’t ask.”

“And if the Goddess knew you were hindering my research by your lie of omission?” Rodney asked.

John caught his eye, studied him for a long time. Then he said, “Sure, go ahead, tell her what we did. Let her kill us.”

Rodney stared at him. Was he insane? And then he realized. The Goddess’s plans would be foiled if John and Evan were killed, because who else had a useful expression of the Gene?

And it was a test. Would Rodney order two otherwise innocent men killed?

Unless it was another kind of test. Were they loyal to Hathor? Would they tell on him if he didn’t turn them in?

“You’ve had your fun,” Rodney said. “Assist me properly from this time forward, and I won’t say anything to our Goddess.”

John raised his eyebrows. “And if we don’t?”

“You don’t want to find out,” Rodney said. “What about you, Evan?”

Evan reached out, waved a hand over the night light, and it lit up.

“Traitor,” John said mildly.

Evan shrugged again. “He knows. What’s the point?”

Relief unfurled in Rodney’s chest. “You’re both part of the Resistance, then.”

“Nope,” John drawled. “I’m not much of a joiner.”

“Says the man who joined the Air Force.”

“We can passively disagree with Hathor without being actively rebellious,” John said.

“Look, I’m not part of any organized resistance,” Rodney said. “But - help me. We can figure out how to work this Ancient tech. It could be useful to us.”

“Us who?” John asked.

“People who refuse to be slaves to that snakehead.”

John looked at Evan. Evan avoided his gaze.

John looked disgusted. He shook Rodney off. “I’ll help you, but we’re not a team, and we’re not in this together. I’m doing what I need to do to survive. Nothing more, nothing less.”

Finally Evan looked at him. “Who are you trying to protect?”

“Myself.” John shook himself free of Rodney’s grip, turned off the music. “All right. Shall we take some energy readings?”

*

Once Rodney learned the truth about Evan and John having the Gene, he expected to make progress much faster - and have to think about ways to make it look slower but still steady. He continued to make little progress, unfortunately. Their work routine didn’t change much. Breakfast together, then Evan and John taking turns lighting up the night light while Rodney ran scans of it and took data readouts of it. Lunch, and then more lighting up the device while Rodney took scans and data readouts. Dinner together, more lighting up the device while Rodney took more scans and data readouts.

Rodney knew the device inside and out, saw it when he closed his eyes to sleep at night, in his dreams, in the cracks in the ceiling and rain on the windows when he was given leave to go topside and see the sun in the solarium with Carson and others of the Goddess’s prized servants.

There were perks to being a prized servant, like having nice quarters, good food, and the right to wear his own clothes (even if he had only a very small wardrobe). Evan and john wore the same clothes every day, soft-soled shoes that barely made a sound on the floor (and had led to them unintentionally sneaking up on Rodney more than once). Truth was, Rodney’s life was better with them around, if only because he had people to talk to, and he had good food, and the lab was kept clean.

John still copied Rodney’s work off of the whiteboard before erasing it. Evan had started filing John’s handwritten equations in a neatly-labeled binder.

Rodney started changing the tests on the night light, sending John and Evan farther and farther away from the lab and seeing if they could still light it up. Apparently there was nowhere on base where they couldn’t affect the night light. John’s expression of the Gene was stronger than Evan’s, as evidenced by the time they’d fought for control over the thing and John had won.

John and Evan were a strange pair. John lounged around the lab, smirking and seemingly idle, rolling his eyes when Rodney said _Think it on_ and _Think harder_ and _Think at it from the left,_ whereas Evan was always dusting or scrubbing something, even when Rodney asked him to light up the night light while John was busy copying out equations. Where John was full of quips and sarcasm, Evan was irritatingly deferential and polite.

“We’re all human here,” Rodney said finally, after Evan had called him _sir_ yet again and offered to lift something that he was perfectly capable of lifting himself. “And we’re all adults. You can call me Rodney or McKay or even Doc like Bugs Bunny over there.”

John grinned and mimed biting a carrot.

Evan just blinked at Rodney, wordless.

Rodney threw his hands up. “Fine. Whatever. Just - loosen up. Which is rich, coming from me, I realize.”

John said, “Maybe he’s spent too much time with the Flowers in the Garden. I remember from when I was stationed in Japan. Everyone was so painfully polite. Just be glad he’s not bowing at you.”

Rodney remembered how polite and deferential Miko had been at first, bringing him sandwiches and whatnot. “Oh. Right. But you’re American. Surely you weren’t like this - before.”

Obviously John had been an Air Force officer before the Conquering. What had Evan done before?

Evan just shrugged and kept on cleaning.

Rodney turned back to the data readouts. He’d stayed up late for weeks on end, even working his “weekends” trying to work up the data into something that made sense, but none of it made any sense. Maybe he would have to talk to a chemist and see about trying to get some kind of chemical analysis on the device. Since it was Ancient there would most likely be naquadah involved, but maybe knowing the exact makeup would prove useful.

The Jaffa had finally taken away Bill Lee’s head when the stench in the corridor became too much. Rodney had seen Evan and some other white-uniformed minions scrubbing the hallway after, which explained what Evan did on his weekends. John just disappeared. Even though he wore a white uniform like Evan, he was obviously a different kind of minion.

That Bill Lee’s head was gone meant the Goddess would be looking to replace it soon. Rodney didn’t want the Goddess to pick him or one of his minions to make an example of them. Rodney needed to make some kind of progress, but it seemed like every new data sample just muddied the waters, and the peak fitting Rodney had tried to do wasn’t working. All noise, no discernible signal.

Rodney said, “Light it up.”

John furrowed his brow, and the night light lit up. Rodney rested his chin on his hand and stared at it, sighing.

“You want me to clean off the whiteboard?” John asked.

Rodney glanced at it. It wasn’t even half full, but nothing on there was useful. “Sure. Copy it down, just to be safe.”

John nodded and found the notebook that Evan had scrounged up for him just for this purpose. He set about writing - he had decent writing, but not as neat as Evan’s - and Rodney kept staring at the night light, hoping for some kind of epiphany, any kind of epiphany, like the one that had gotten him noticed by the SGC.

Most days he couldn’t decide if that had been a blessing or not. On the one hand, he was now one of the Goddess’s chief scientists. On the other hand, he was still alive.

Suddenly the light dimmed.

Rodney swore. _“Merde._ Is it running out of battery? I don’t know if we’ll be able to find a replacement.” Most of the other Ancient devices in the Goddess’s possession were too valuable to be used for experiments like this.

John and Evan turned to him - and the night light flared lighter.

“Looks fine to me,” Evan said, duster in hand.

“It was dim for a second there,” Rodney said.

“Maybe you should take a break,” Evan said, not unkindly.

“What he said.” John pointed to Evan with his pen, then set about writing.

The light dimmed again.

“Look!” Rodney cried, pointing.

Evan responded immediately, but John didn’t.

“Oh. It is dimmer. Sheppard -?”

John turned, and it flared brighter, back to full luminosity.

“It’s you,” Rodney said. “You’re affecting its brightness. When you’re distracted, it goes dimmer.”

“But I’m not its battery,” John said. “All we do is turn it on and off, right? We’re not powering it, are we? _Are we?”_

“What do you mean?” Evan asked, wide-eyed. “Are we human batteries?”

“No,” Rodney said. “I think maybe it responds to your focus.”

“But when we were far away it was properly bright, right?” Evan asked.

Rodney nodded, scrambling for a light meter. “Concentrate, John. Can you make it dimmer?”

John set down the pen and paper, focused on the device. He furrowed his brow deeply, and sure enough, the light got dimmer, dimmer, dimmer.

Rodney watched the numbers on the light meter change. “Make it brighter.”

John obeyed.

“This could be huge.” Rodney clapped John on the shoulder, then shoved at him. “Go get the energy scanner. Evan, can you do it?”

Evan didn’t make faces when he initiated the Ancient device. Instead his expression went even blanker, and his gaze went distant. Sure enough, he could modulate the brightness of the light with his mind as well.

This had to be it, had to be the answer. If Rodney could understand how the energy in the device was attenuated, he might be able to figure out what turned it on and off. If he measured while Evan and John turned the thing down to almost extinguishment, maybe he’d see the tipping point, the unique part of the energy frequency that signaled the on/off point.

Rodney knew how Goa’uld technology worked, how the combination of naquadah in the blood and mental focus switched certain devices on and off. He was probably one of the few people in the galaxy who knew that - or how to convert Goa’uld devices for use by people without host-levels of naquadah in their blood. The Gene was different from naquadah in the blood, because it was in every cell of a person’s body.

Rodney knew Carson had experimented a lot on just what the right level of naquadah in the blood needed to activate Goa’uld technology was (and tried not to think about Carson’s grief over his failed experiments and test subjects).

John returned with the energy scanner, and he and Evan took turns dimming and brightening the night light while Rodney took readings.

They worked well into the night, long after supper, though Evan kept glancing anxiously at the clock once it hit eight.

At about one a.m., the lab doors slid open, and Jaffa arrived.

“You are late,” one of them said.

Evan hurried to the door, bowed politely. “Apologies. Dr. McKay still needs us -”

The Jaffa backhanded him across the face.

Evan hit the floor with a worrying thump.

“Hey!” John shouted. He was across the lab in an instant. He went to kneel beside Evan, but a Jaffa grabbed his arm and hauled him to the door.

“Wait,” Rodney protested. “I really do need them.”

Another Jaffa hauled Evan to his feet. Blood dripped from Evan’s face, stained his white uniform.

Rodney crossed the lab, but the lead Jaffa snarled at him, barked a command, and the Jaffa left, dragging Evan and John with them.

Rodney didn’t see them the next day.

He fretted and barely ate, and when he finally realized he was hungry, his food was delivered by an anonymous female minion in a white uniform. It was tasteless.

Rodney stayed up well past his usual bedtime, running linear regressions over and over again, trying to find the answer, the way to unlock Ancient technology for his new Goa’uld masters.

But the answer never came.

Finally, he resigned himself to troubled sleep.

*

_“Unauthorized gate activation.”_

Rodney floundered upright, startled and afraid. He heard shouting in the hallways, thundering footsteps, the clank of Jaffa armor, the alien sound of staff weapons powering up.

He stumbled over to his door, pulled it open. His Jaffa guards were gone, and instead hordes of Jaffa were streaming past.

“What’s going on?” he asked, but of course none of the Jaffa answered.

Rodney tried to step into the hallway, but a white-uniformed minion carrying an assault rifle stayed him with a hand.

“No, Doc, it’s not safe.” He shoved Rodney back into his room, yanked the door shut.

Rodney heard it lock from the outside.

Terror seized him. He pounded on the door. “No! What’s going on? Let me out!”

Klaxons blared all through the base, and there was still more running and shouting, the intermittent sounds of weapon fire, some assault rifles, some staff weapons, some those terrible phallic z-shaped things that shot blue light.

Rodney stood frozen by the door, trembling, panicking, while his mind raced.

And then he realized. This would be it. Might be his chance to escape. Gate activation meant someone was trying to gate offworld without proper authority. Chances were every Jaffa was heading for the gate room. No one would be watching the doors.

He turned, pulled on some clothes and shoes. He reached under the bathroom sink for the emergency kit he’d made, slowly storing up food and water rations. No prisoners were allowed to keep food or water, partially to control supplies, partially to ensure no one could ever run away, as people outside the base were strictly forbidden from giving food to strangers, kept on strict rationing themselves.

Rodney had gone hungry multiple days to build up that supply. He had enough food and water for three days, which should have been enough to get him over the border to Utah, which he’d heard was populated with people paranoid for the apocalypse who had massive amounts of food storage and bomb shelters and other 1950’s bullshit that now seemed like a very good idea.

He’d also squirreled away tiny bits and pieces from the lab to build a magnetic device that would allow him to unlock his door from the inside. This was his chance. This was -

The alarms stopped.

Rodney set his gear down in his bed, prowled over to the door to listen.

It was quiet.

Dammit.

He scrambled to stash everything back under the sink, and just in time, too, because his door burst open, and a Jaffa in a blood-stained uniform barked at him in Goa’uld. Rodney could read the language better than he could hear it, but he knew what that command was.

He went along obediently, because he didn’t want to be punished.

He wasn’t the only one. White-uniformed minions were herded out of their barracks, sleepy and protesting and in various states of undress. Higher-ranked servants in their own pajamas were also being herded down the corridor, toward the stairs.

Down to the gate room, Rodney realized.

He shuffled along in the press of bodies, scanning faces, searching. He saw Carson. He saw Miko - had she been on the base all this time? He saw Ambrose and Kavanagh, Grodin and Rothman. He saw some of Carson’s medical staff and the girl who’d brought him food. It wasn’t until he made it into the gate room and shuffled into place beside the rest of the useful scientists that he saw John and Evan in the crowd of white-clad minions. John’s expression was furious. Evan’s blank.

Hathor sat on her gaudy golden throne, the one decorated with the emblems of her deity and power - with the horns and moons and lotuses from Ancient Egypt - at the top of the gate ramp.

Daniel Jackson stood at her right hand, First Prime O’Neill at her left.

Jaffa surrounded everyone in the gate room.

Three people were on their knees at the bottom of the gate ramp, Jaffa keeping them in place with staff weapons aimed at them.

Rodney’s heart crawled into his throat when he recognized Radek Zelenka. Radek was wearing the old olive BDUs of gate teams long past, though the name on the pocket was for someone named Ferguson. The other man was the one who’d told Rodney to stay in his quarters. He was wearing a white minion uniform, and his face was bruised and cut. The third person was slender, with impossibly white hair on someone so young. When he lifted his head, Rodney saw that he was one of the Flowers from the Garden, had unnaturally blue eyes and glitter on his cheekbones.

Behind Hathor’s throne, the open gate shimmered blue, like the ocean, like a waterfall, like the sky, like freedom.

“You have failed in your pitiful attempts to rebel against your Goddess,” she said. “We are disappointed in your lack of vision for the greatness that We will bring to your people and this planet. No one steps through the chappa’ai without Our express permission. Wherever you hoped to go, whatever you hoped to do, it is all fruitless. We have sent a naquadah bomb through the gate to destroy your allies, and you will die here, for all to see and to know: We are your Goddess, and We know all, and Our will shall be done.”

At the mention of the bomb, the white-clad minion’s eyes went wide, but Radek just looked grim. The Flower’s expression remained blank, but in Rodney’s limited experience with the Flowers, they all looked blank when they weren’t performing.

“Any last words?” Hathor asked.

Radek said something in Czech that Rodney didn’t actually understand but that he was pretty sure was profanity.

The white-clad minion said, “Cameron Mitchell, Captain, service number 418-86-6066, date of birth May 16, 1970.”

The Flower said, _“Jangnan aniji na moksum georeo, jikyeojulge moksum georeo.”_

One of the other Flowers, a young man with artificially red-brown hair and a feline face, burst into tears. The Flower beside him, another young man with curly blonde hair, clapped a hand over his mouth, trying to silence him.

Hathor cast the Flowers a sharp look, and the crying one disappeared behind the rest of the ranks, dragged by his friend.

Hathor eyed them all for a moment longer, then she glanced at her Jaffa, lifted her chin.

Three staff blasts went off, and all three of the rebels collapsed to the ground, lifeless, the scent of burnt flesh sharp in the air.

One of the female Flowers screamed.

Hathor flicked her wrist, and two Jaffa marched over to her, wrenched her out of the Flower ranks, forced her to her knees, and a third killed her with another staff blast, let her corpse fall beside her friend’s.

Rodney’s throat closed. He couldn’t breathe. He’d been insane to even think about trying to rebel, to join any existing Resistance, to escape.

The entire gate room was silent.

Then Hathor rose, her gold jewelry ringing, held out her hand. Daniel Jackson accepted it, led her down the ramp like they were two teenagers going to prom. Jaffa dragged the corpses out of their path. First Prime O’Neill followed.

*

The next day in the lab, John and Evan arrived with breakfast precisely on time. Instead of hopping up onto one of the work benches and taking his share, John gestured for Rodney to go first.

Rodney did, wary, because he didn’t like it when his routine was disrupted. His routine gave him the illusion that his life was stable, that his universe was predictable, that he had some measure of control over what was happening, that he was safe. But the Jaffa still had control of John and Evan and their time with Rodney, wouldn’t abide by Rodney keeping them working late. And Hathor still held everyone’s lives in the palm of her perfectly manicured, cruel, capricious hand.

Once Rodney had served himself - bacon, eggs, toast and jam, hash browns - John and Evan served themselves, ate in silence.

Once breakfast was finished, Evan went to take the tray back to the kitchens.

“What’s the plan today?” John asked.

Rodney sank down on one of the stools beside the workbench. “I don’t know.”

John frowned at him. “What?”

Rodney threw his hands up. “I don’t know. I’ve taken all the measurements I could think of, run the linear regressions on different combinations of data sets, but it’s all noise. Sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

“MacBeth,” John said.

Rodney rolled his eyes. “So you know Shakespeare. Glad you’re good for something. Just - get to cleaning. You and Evan both. I’m going topside to think.” He swept out of the lab, headed for the elevators.

He almost bowled over Evan as he stepped out of the elevator.

“Rodney?” Evan asked.

But Rodney turned to the Jaffa guarding the elevator and said, “Take me topside. I need some natural light.”

The Jaffa nodded and swiped his security badge so Rodney had clearance to go up to the surface.

Evan looked shocked - and hurt - as the elevator doors closed.

He was probably sad that a couple of his Flowers had died.

Rodney couldn’t fathom what Radek had been thinking, trying to escape through the gate. Especially since all he’d done was get a bunch of innocent people killed.

Or were they innocent? They’d been stupid enough to get caught, cost lots of people their lives.

Hathor was their new Goddess, her reign their New World Order. The SGC had seen it thousands of times, entire solar systems dominated by a single Goa’uld. Rodney had always believed that science was the future. He’d just never seen the day when someone’s better science would get the better of humanity. That was the Goa’uld’s advantage: superior technology. In sixth grade, he’d built a non-working model of a nuclear warhead. He’d thought, naively, that science was the answer to everything, that by learning more and more people could have better lives, the world could be a better place.

Magic is just science we don’t understand yet, his grandmother used to always say, telling him not to dismiss magic.

Scrying bowls? Were basically just video chats or surveillance.

If you believe in it, it can happen.

The ancient gods? Weren’t gods at all. Just had superior technology. Their miracles were actually a product of advanced science.

The Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians and plenty of other ancient religions had taken a curious stance with their mythology, their deities afflicted with human foibles like wrath, jealousy, romance, pining, infidelity.

That was just wishful thinking.

The gods were a far cry from human.

They didn’t give a damn about humans.

Maybe the humans had been arrogant, thinking they could go to war with the gods, humans with their frail bodies and technology that was pathetic in comparison.

Rodney sat beside the window, gazing out at the blue sky, at the filtered sunlight, and couldn’t help but think that maybe the humans had had it coming. Daniel Jackson and Jack O’Neill were paying for opening the Stargate in their direct servitude to Hathor. Sam Carter had already paid her penance with her life in the initial uprising, led by her and Janet Fraiser and some of the other women on base, women - straight women - immune to the Nish’ta. Teal’c’s head had been on a pike in the gate room for so long that the room still smelled faintly of death. Or was that from the other executions that had taken place there?

Sitting in the solarium, staring at the freedom he could never have, fixating on the senseless deaths that he’d had no power to prevent was pointless. Rodney sighed, stood up, stretched. His stomach rumbled, and he realized it was far past lunch time.

He went to the elevator, signaled to the Jaffa, and headed back down to the lab.

When he stepped into the lab, he saw that lunch had been laid out for him, salad and cold cuts and cheese and bread and other fixings so he could make his own sandwich. The food tray was stacked with two plates and bowls, which meant Evan and John had already eaten, but they were nowhere to be seen.

Rodney prowled through the lab, searching for a note or any indication of where they’d gone, and then he remembered that as much as he considered them his minions, they weren’t under his control and didn’t owe any loyalty to him. He fired up his laptop with a sigh. He had to show something for today, that he was sure of. Kavanagh, because he was an idiot and also opportunistic and selfish, was the Goddess’s chief scientist, and while he did no science himself, he was tasked with overseeing the other scientists, making sure they more or less stayed on track and were useful to the Goddess. Since he was dumber than Rodney, he seemed to think Rodney’s pace was reasonable. Kavanagh wasn’t capable of checking up on every single scientist every day, but Rodney didn’t dare have an empty log for today.

He did log his time in the solarium pondering on the problem.

The lab door swung open, and Evan stumbled into the lab.

Rodney turned to him, alarmed, but John was right behind him.

“I told you, I’m fine,” Evan protested. “If something was really wrong, Doc Beckett would -” He cut himself off when he saw Rodney.

John glanced at Rodney, then advanced on Evan, backing him up till he was pressed against one of the whiteboards. “That was a stupid thing you did and you know it. I don’t know what you did before, but obviously working in the Garden blinded you to the reality of what life is like now. Mouthing off to the Jaffa like that was stupid and dangerous.”

Rodney got a good look at Evan, saw that the side of his face was covered in mottled bruising.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Just had a misunderstanding with some of the Jaffa,” Evan said. He stepped around John and went to fuss with the food, fixing Rodney a sandwich. “I didn’t know when you’d be back and I know how much you hate it when the tomatoes make your sandwich soggy, so -”

“Evan got sassy with a Jaffa and nearly got killed because of it,” John said, arms crossed over his chest.

The look Evan shot him was venomous, and Rodney was startled by the intensity of his emotion.

“Thought you were only doing what you need to survive, Sheppard.”

John looked hurt for a moment. “I’m not stupid. I know the last time we ran into that guy you goaded him deliberately so you took the brunt of the beating.”

Evan deflated some. “No, I -”

“Throwing your life away is stupid,” John said sharply. “You can’t take that kind of punishment again, not so soon after the last -” And then he cut himself off.

“After the last beating?” Rodney asked.

John and Evan both avoided his gaze.

“You were beaten by the Jaffa because you were late,” Rodney said.

Neither of them looked at him.

“Because I kept you late.” Rodney sighed. “I’m not out to make life harder for either of you. Why didn’t you tell me you had a curfew?”

“Thought you knew,” John said.

Thought you knew and didn’t give a damn, he meant.

“Well, I didn’t know. I’ve been working alone for who knows how long,” Rodney said. “I don’t usually deal with you minions. I don’t know what the rules are for you.”

“Minions?” John echoed, eyebrows going up.

“Whatever you’re called.” Rodney waved his hand dismissively. “My point is I live by a different set of rules. I don’t know yours. If you need to be places other than here at certain times, tell me and you can go. You belong to the Goddess, not me.”

John’s expression went flat. “Yeah. We belong to the Goddess.”

Rodney winced. “I didn’t mean -”

“We know you didn’t.” Evan smiled, but the expression was all wrong, because his jaw and cheek were bruised and his lip was split. He nudged Rodney’s lunch toward him. “Here. You need to eat.”

Then he headed for the other side of the lab and started tidying up compulsively, straightening paper and folders, wiping down the workbenches even though they could probably pass a white glove test.

John leaned against the counter, his usual insouciant self, but he winced when he shifted, straightened up. Because he’d been beaten.

“How bad?” Rodney asked. He had no appetite, but he had to eat, because his blood sugar didn’t give a damn about his conscience. He’d been angry at the rebels for being stupid and endangering other people on the base, like that one Flower who’d been upset at her friend’s death, and here he’d been the cause of John and Evan’s injuries, in a roundabout way. Sure the Jaffa could have chosen not to beat them for their disobedience, but -

But this world was difficult, and the most humane thing to do was make life easier for each other, right? Try to maximize survival and comfort and minimize death and pain. The Jaffa were unpredictable in their behavior, but their cruelty was always a given.

Which meant Rodney shouldn’t have been surprised when Jaffa came to collect all three of them mid-afternoon and herd them into the gate room to witness more executions.

Again, three more people, all in olive uniforms, a skinny bespectacled man named Menard, a muscular young man named Woeste, and an older man named Holland.

This time Hathor didn’t give them the chance to utter their last words, and she didn’t bother with staff blasts. Instead the Jaffa let loose with their zats, three blasts. First one stuns. Second one kills. Third one vaporizes.

Like those people never existed.

Rodney saw Kavanagh standing at the bottom of the ramp with some of the Goddess’s other favored scientists and slaves, and he looked pleased.

So he’d caught this latest band of rebels, resistance fighters.

Rodney wondered what his reward was, if it tasted like human blood and ashes.

He wondered how Evan could even stomach food, because after the executions they were shuffled back to the lab, and Evan brought dinner right on time, cold fruit soup, a cold pasta salad, and some light grilled chicken.

Rodney couldn’t sleep, stayed up late running yet more pointless linear regressions on his data.

The next day, there were more executions, some of Carson’s medical staff and a scientist whose name Rodney had never bothered to learn. She was German and blonde and would have been pretty if she didn’t look terrified.

Rodney had forgotten that staff weapons weren’t just firearms, were bludgeoning weapons. He’d never seen someone beaten to death before.

He’d never forget the sounds, the smells.

He didn’t realize how close he’d been to the executions till he got back to the lab and Evan scrambled to fetch a warm damp washcloth so he could wipe the blood off his face.

Rodney shoved him away. “Don’t - don’t touch me!”

Evan recoiled sharply. “Sorry.” He held out the washcloth gingerly. “But you really should clean it off.”

Rodney shook his head. “Both of you just - go. Get out. I won’t need you for the rest of the day.”

“Rodney,” John began.

“I said go!”

Evan actually bowed before he scrambled for the door, and Rodney felt awful, because he didn’t want Evan to think of him the way he thought of the Jaffa or Hathor, but John followed him, and Rodney closed the door behind them, locked it.

Then he threw up.

Then he cried.

And finally he cleaned off his face, and he stayed up all night running more pointless linear regressions on his data.

*

When Rodney got to the lab the next morning, Evan and John were waiting with breakfast at hand for him, like always.

Kavanagh was there, too, along with a couple of massive, looming Jaffa who Rodney didn’t recognize.

“Good morning, Doctor,” Evan said, and bowed.

Rodney didn’t know if he was doing that because of how Rodney had shouted at him last night or because there were Jaffa in the room - possibly the Jaffa who’d beaten him and John on prior occasions.

Evan served Kavanagh a mug of coffee, then handed Rodney his usual mug, one with a pretty painted bluebell on the side, before retreating to the corner with a giant mug of hot oatmeal that he could practically drink. There was something almost feral to the way he was clutching the mug in both hands, shoulders hunched, posture defensive. He reminded Rodney of the dog he and Jeannie had had as children, how it had been protective of its food.

Had John and Evan not had regular sources of food prior to working for Rodney? John had always struck him as slender, but Evan was broad across the shoulders, strong-looking.

“How’s it going, McKay?” Kavanagh asked.

“It’s going,” Rodney said. “I appreciate the Goddess’s generosity in sending me research assistants, of course.”

Kavanagh’s expression was too brittle and smug to be called a smile. “The Goddess is generous with those who worship her well. How does the device work? What makes it work for those with the Ancient gene?”

Rodney had no clue. Time to improvise. To keep himself - and the other two - alive. “At this point it appears that the gene affects protein production in the skin, nervous system, and brain, that allows carriers of the gene to activate the technology by touch alone, similar to naquadah in the blood. Reproducing the various proteins is better left to someone like Dr. Beckett. However, I am close to isolating the threshold frequency that turns the devices on and off. Once I isolate it totally and can replicate, we’ll be good to go.”

Kavanagh reached out, prodded Rodney’s laptop, which was open and on. “You’ve been running an awful lot of linear regressions, but you haven’t isolated the signal so far.”

“We’re close,” Rodney assured him.

He didn’t even see the blow coming.

One moment he was looking at Kavanagh, the next he was on his hands and knees, head spinning.

When he pushed himself up, Kavanagh was grinning maliciously, one of the Jaffa had a staff weapon aimed at him, and John had a white-knuckled grip on Evan’s arm.

Kavanagh leaned down and whispered in Rodney’s ear, his breath hot and disgustingly moist, “You can’t bullshit me, Rodney. You’re not as smart as you think you are. If you don’t have something soon, it’ll be your turn in the gate room next.”

Then he straightened up, barked at the Jaffa, and swept out of the lab.

As soon as the door closed behind them, John and Evan were helping him to his feet. Evan headed for the kitchens to fetch some ice. John led Rodney over to a stool and helped him sit.

“How many fingers am I holding up?” John asked.

Rodney swatted his hand aside. “I’m not concussed.”

“You’ve been concussed before?” John raised his eyebrows.

“My ears are ringing a little. I’ll be fine.” Rodney pressed a hand to the side of his face, winced.

“You’re not fine,” John said. “It’s okay to not be fine after that.” He smoothed a hand up and down Rodney’s back.

“No it’s not.” Rodney sucked in a deep breath. “If we don’t get some real answers soon, Hathor’s killing us next.”

John’s hand stilled.

“That’s what Kavanagh said to me.”

Evan burst back into the lab with a bag full of ice wrapped in a dish towel. “Here.” He handed it to Rodney. “Ten on, ten off.”

John said, “Your linear regression formula is wrong.”

Rodney, blessed coolness pressed to his burning, aching jaw, looked up. “What?”

John said it again.

Rodney frowned at him. “How would you know?”

“They have been since day one,” John said.

“How do you _know?”_

“You know most military officers are college-educated, right?” John said. “Unless they get battlefield promotions.”

“I didn’t know that,” Rodney admitted. He’d been surprised that Dr. Samantha Carter, the brilliant astrophysicist behind the science of the stargate, had also been a military officer, since most armed thugs preferred brawn over brains.

“I got my bachelors in applied mathematics, was working on a masters in topological combinatorics so I could go up for major in a few years,” John said.

Rodney stared at him. “What?”

“Have to have a masters or its equivalent to make major,” Evan said quietly.

Rodney continued staring at John. “You knew. That first day. You _knew!_ You made a face as you were copying down my work and - why didn’t you say anything?”

Of course, neither John nor Evan had said anything about being Gene carriers on their first day either.

Rodney looked at Evan. Evan didn’t look surprised. Both of them had been playing dumb this entire time.

“Why?” Rodney asked. “You could be useful to the Goddess, could live much better than you are now.”

John’s expression remained blank.

He was part of the Resistance. He was trying to do what Rodney had been doing, keeping the work slow to thwart Hathor but keep it looking productive enough to stay alive. He’d only revealed the flaw in the linear regression when Rodney’s life was at stake.

“Oh,” Rodney said. He looked at Evan. Was _Evan_ part of the Resistance?

But Evan looked just as surprised as Rodney felt.

John was on Evan in a flash, pen at his throat. “Don’t breathe a word of this to anyone, hear me? One word and what those Jaffa did to you will look like a walk in the park.”

Evan, pressed against the wall, raised his hands in surrender, blue eyes wide.

“I - I promise,” he stammered. “Not a word. Not a single word.”

John searched his gaze for a long moment, then eased up. “Remember that.” Then he straightened up, turned to Rodney. “Come on. I’ll show you where you went wrong.”

*

Whatever Evan’s reassurances, John didn’t trust him, not one bit. Instead of letting Evan go back and forth to the kitchens alone like he did, John went with him, ostensibly to help carry things, but Rodney knew better. It was to make sure Evan didn’t hare off to the nearest Jaffa and accuse John and Rodney of being rebels or whatever the Resistance was calling itself these days.

John was right, though. Rodney’s algorithm for the linear regression had been wrong. A simple algebraic error had given him nothing but noise for weeks on end. One tiny shift, and the noise was resolving itself into signals. Rodney ran the new regression on every single data set that he’d run the old one on before, partially so his work looked thorough, partially to slow things down while appearing to make progress, and partially to confuse anyone - like Kavanagh - who was likely spying on his research. He was pretty sure he had isolated enough frequencies and done sufficient peak-fitting that he knew the final combination of frequencies to sort through, but he wasn’t going to do that on the computer.

He was going to have John do that by hand. It was easy for Kavanagh to spy on Rodney’s work saved on his laptop. It was harder for Kavanagh to snoop through hard copies of Rodney’s work. If he scattered the pages of the final formula strategically through all the other handwritten notes in the binder, no one but him - and John - would be able to understand the real solution to the problem.

Evan was a ghost in the background, barely speaking, his presence marked by the whisper of his dust cloths and the swish of his broom, the rustle of papers as he straightened them. He still made sure Rodney took regular breaks, had regular meals. Because John had to escort Evan to the kitchens and the bathroom, Rodney was forced to take breaks, and maybe that was a good thing.

Because they were close. Close to isolating that all-important frequency, the one that would give them a way to turn Ancient devices on and off at will. Any device that was more complicated than a simple on-off switch would require more work, but if Rodney could crack that initial code, the rest of the way ought to be smooth sailing.

John was also quite possibly a mathematical genius of unparalleled intellect. There was a reason it took computers hours to do linear regressions, because the calculating power required was massive.

“Humans are superior to computers in so many ways,” John said, when Rodney asked him about it. “Think about a human’s ability to recognize faces, track an object in flight and catch it or intercept it, calculate a distance and angle and make a jump, climb a tree or a fence. Our computing power is impressive. Our processing power is impressive. Our ability to calculate is impressive.”

“And yet I’ve never met a human who can do what you do,” Rodney said.

“How many humans have you met?”

“Enough.”

John glanced at him. “And yet you’ve said more than once that scientists get good at science at the sacrifice of being good at people.”

“True.”  

Rodney and John were sitting side-by-side at Rodney’s primary workbench, elbow to elbow, Rodney going over John’s previous regressions while John worked on the next one in the list. They were close to isolating the key signal frequency. Rodney could feel it. Or maybe he could just feel John’s warmth, smell the soap he used.

For years, Rodney had told himself that the sacrifice was worth it, that the sacrifice of time with people and friendships and relationships (like his sister and her budding family - who were probably dead) would be worth the science in the end. Would be worth the advancements and gains and betterment of humanity. For years, Rodney had been stupidly alone.

Maybe he didn’t have to be anymore.

Rodney glanced sidelong at John. He was unfairly handsome, all bright green eyes, smirky mouth, pretty jawline and cheekbones, his features almost delicate without being effeminate.

John glanced sidelong at him. “Do I have something on my face?”

“No,” Rodney said. “I was just looking at you.”

“Secretly wondering if I’m a computer?” John arched an eyebrow, smiled that sexy little smile of his.

“No,” Rodney said. He swallowed hard. How did one go about saying what he wanted to say?

John turned to him more fully. “Do I have something in my teeth?”

Rodney’s gaze immediately went to John’s mouth, and there was that smile again. “No. I just -” He leaned in, drawn inexorably by John’s warmth and scent and the fierce intellect behind it all.

Evan cleared his throat. “I’ll just - go get some coffee, shall I?”

“You do that,” Rodney said, flapping a dismissive hand in his direction, his gaze never straying from John’s.

“Maybe,” John said, “I have something on my lips?”

Rodney kissed him.

Maybe it had been too damn long since Rodney had been with another person, but John Sheppard was a phenomenal kisser. His hands on Rodney’s waist and shoulder were firm without being aggressive. His lips were soft and warm, and the way he curled his tongue against Rodney’s sent lightning shooting down his spine.

Rodney moaned softly.

John wrenched himself backward. “Dammit!” He was on his feet and scrambling for the door.

Rodney felt guilt and anger flood him. “Hey - you kissed me back!”

“No - Evan. He left. Unattended. He must have noticed how attracted I am to you and waited till I had my guard down.” John tore out of the lab.

Rodney followed. He didn’t know why. He hated running. Running was hard. But he caught up to John just at the elevator. No one was allowed to take the stairs. John was practically vibrating with tension.

The Jaffa at the elevator eyed them both warily, but Rodney had a lot more freedom of movement through the halls, so Rodney didn’t bother with trying to think up an explanation. As soon as the elevator arrived, John and Rodney both stepped in. John punched the button for the floor where the mess hall and kitchens were located. Then he closed his eyes and took deep breaths, in and out.

Of course. He’d been a combat pilot before this. He was used to stressful situations where his life was in danger. Because if Evan went and betrayed them to the Goddess or Kavanagh, they were done for.

The elevator doors opened, and John made a beeline for the kitchens. Rodney had been to the mess hall before, back when he’d done his orientation at the SGC, but he’d never been to the kitchens, didn’t know how to get to them except by going behind the chow line, which wasn’t an option. John led him past the mess hall doors and to the next set of double doors. Rodney recognized the female minion who was standing between the two Jaffa who guarded the doors. She’d brought Rodney food while Evan and John were missing (had been laid up after being punished by the Jaffa for breaking curfew).

The girl smiled at John, cast Rodney a worried look, but she nodded to the Jaffa, and they granted John and Rodney entrance to the kitchen.

“Where’s Evan?” John asked as soon as he stepped into the kitchen, which was bustling with yet more white-clad minions.

“Not here,” one of them said without looking away from what he was chopping. “Not time for Doc McKay’s coffee break.”

So the kitchen knew Rodney’s meal routine.

And Evan had deliberately evaded them.

“Sometimes he goes to visit the Flowers,” another minion said. She glanced over her shoulder at John and Rodney. “He misses them. Worries about them.”

Given how Evan fussed over Rodney, he could easily believe Evan worried about the people he’d served alongside, cared for, maybe even protected the way he’d protected John from the Jaffa. But John’s expression was cold, hard, furious behind the calm. He didn’t believe that for one second.

“Thanks,” he said. “We’ll go check the Garden.”

“Before you go,” another minion said, “here.” He approached with a tray of coffee.

Rodney went to accept it, because if Evan was doing something dangerous John was far more equipped to handle him, but John intercepted him, accepted the coffee tray with a terse nod.

Of course. If they were in the corridors under the watchful eye of the Jaffa - and the security cameras in the SGC - then John had to be seen serving Rodney.

John led Rodney out of the kitchens, nudging one of the doors open with his hip. Rodney had been to shows in the Garden, knew how to get to the doors that led into the theater, but he didn’t know how to get backstage. He followed John through the corridors, feeling frustrated and helpless.

“The Flowers won’t talk to you,” he said in a low voice to John. “But you know who can find out where Evan is without causing too much trouble? Carson. Let’s go to the infirmary.”

John paused, considered. Nodded. Rodney led the way this time. Out of the corner of his eye he could see John just behind his left shoulder, his head slightly bowed, posture deferential to the untrained eye.

Thankfully the Jaffa guarding the infirmary didn’t ask him any questions, because before Evan and John had arrived Rodney had gotten his limited human interaction with Carson. Carson was usually busy with patients while Rodney followed him around and ranted about other people’s stupidity, but he did listen, Rodney knew that.

“Carson, hey.” Rodney smiled.

“Oh, hello Rodney, John.” Carson was sitting at his desk, sipping from a mug of coffee - a familiar mug, with a bluebell painted on the side. “What can I do for you?”

“Have you seen Evan?” Rodney asked.

“Aye, he was just here, brought me some coffee.” Carson smiled. “He’s a nice lad, nips round now and again to make sure I’m all right. I understand you’ve been keeping him quite busy for the last while, but today he was finally able to take a break.”

“Ah,” Rodney said. “We must have gotten our signals crossed somehow.”

“Aye. He said he was going by the kitchens to fetch you coffee.” Carson nodded at the tray John was carrying.

John looked at Carson for a long moment, and Carson looked back at him, expression calm. As a medical doctor he was used to other people’s scrutiny, because people tended to be wary of him when he proposed cutting them open or poisoning them to save their lives.

“Well, extra coffee can’t hurt,” John said. “We’ll just be going. Sorry to bother you.”

“Actually, too much coffee could -”

Carson cut himself off when the shriek of a machine pierced the air. He frowned, listened. Then his face went white.

“Mother!”

His mug crashed to the floor, shattered. He shot across the infirmary.

Rodney and John followed automatically.

Rodney was pretty sure he knew what that sound meant, had heard it on a thousand and one medical dramas on television over the years.

Carson threw open a door in the back wall and darted into the next room. Rodney had always thought the room was some kind of closet, but it was actually a private room. Carson’s mother’s room. Judging by the flowers decorating the walls, the photos of cats and Carson at various ages, the knitted afghans and decorative pillows, she’d lived there a long time.

And she’d just died there.

Carson rushed to her side, checking the monitors beside her bed, but they were all flatlines and zeros and nothing, nothing, nothing. He shouted for a crash cart, and John yanked Rodney out of the doorway before he got bowled over by a team of nurses.

Carson was frantic, warming up the paddles, trying to restart her heart. Tears were streaming down his face and he was almost incoherent with grief.

His mother looked like she’d died in her sleep, though. Peacefully. She’d been reading a book. It had fallen to the floor, its spine bent terribly. She’d even had a nice mug of tea before she’d passed, a familiar white mug decorated with a hand-painted bluebell on her night stand.

“We should go,” John said quietly.

Rodney nodded.

They headed back to the lab, subdued.

When they got there, Evan was standing beside one of the workbenches, which had a tray and three mugs of coffee on it.

“Oh. You came back.” He sounded disappointed - and a little nervous.

“Were you expecting us to just let you run loose?” John asked. He set down the tray and prowled toward Evan.

Evan blushed. “I was kind of expecting you both to go to Rodney’s quarters or something.”

“You know the rules,” John said. “You don’t get to go _anywhere_ alone.”

Evan’s expression turned mulish. “I wasn’t going to sit around and _watch_ you go at it.”

“We weren’t going to go that far,” Rodney said.

John turned to him sharply.

“Not in the lab,” Rodney added. “That’s terribly unhygienic.”

Evan cleared his throat. “Well, I can’t read your minds. Next time just - send me back to my quarters or something.”

That wasn’t really an option either, since then he’d be alone with a Jaffa escort, and who knew what he’d tell them.

“That’s not what’s important right now,” Rodney said. “Carson’s mother just died.”

“Oh, no.” Evan closed his eyes, turned away, his expression grief-stricken. Had he been close to Carson’s mother?

“So we might be without the best of our medical care or a while. You two had better not tick off any Jaffa for the foreseeable future.”

John nodded. Evan did, too. He picked up one of the mugs of coffee, sipped at it, sighed.

“Poor Carson. Should we go check on him?”

“We were just there,” John said. “He’ll let us know if he needs us.”

He glanced at Rodney. He was obviously still wary of Evan. But Evan willingly taste-tested the coffee he’d brought, and they returned to work in somber silence.

Rodney hadn’t imagined anyone dying of old age while Hathor reigned. He wondered if maybe Carson’s mother hadn’t died of old age so much as given up. She’d loved flowers and gardening and cold Scottish rain and the blue and gray skies of the highlands. She hadn’t seen the sun or sky in months, held hostage by Hathor under guise of hospitality to keep Carson in line.

Rodney wondered if John or Evan would ever give up. He knew he wouldn’t.

*

Carson’s mother’s funeral was a massive affair, held topside under the sun she never got to see. It was almost normal, a coffin and handfuls of dirt, flung flowers and prayers from the Bible, _ashes to ashes and dust to dust._ There was a headstone, eulogies. Carson wept quietly through the whole thing. It was Daniel Jackson, dressed in a somber black suit instead of the usual ridiculous gaudy gold of Hathor’s consort, who performed last rites, read the ritual prayers.

He could conduct funerals in a dozen languages.

Rodney wore a dark suit as well. Selected medical personnel, like Marie the head nurse and Carolyn the other doctor, were present and by Carson’s side. John and Evan were present, along with a few other white-clad minions, and also a couple of Flowers, the cat-faced one and a tall, skinny one with soft pink hair.

Rodney could almost ignore the Jaffa who surrounded them the entire time, staff weapons at the ready in case someone tried to make a break for the old security gate.

Once the casket had been lowered and the grave filled, everyone went back inside.

There was a wake down in the mess hall, complete with tea and bannocks and shortbread. Carson told stories about his mother, about growing up in Scotland, and there was laughter and tears. Carson was a gifted storyteller.

Once the wake was over, most of the guests dispersed, but Evan of course stuck around to help clean up, because he was that kind of person. John and Rodney stuck around as well, because where Evan was, John was too.

John made some attempt at speaking to the Flowers, because back in his Air Force days he’d done a stint in Japan, but as it turned out the two Flowers were Korean, and either their English was minimal or they were playing dumb to avoid conversation, and things turned awkward fast.

Rodney had never much been one to make small talk before the Conquering, and afterward it seemed pointless.

_The weather today is lovely, isn’t it? Our evil alien overlord just murdered five more people in front of us, but those clouds just look dreadful._

John looked relieved when Marie, the head nurse, started toward them. She was Korean and could save him from further awkwardness with the Flowers, but she went to Carson instead, pulled him side, spoke to him softly.

But not softly enough that Rodney didn’t hear.

“Tests confirmed it. Your mother was poisoned.”

Carson, who’d looked drawn and wan for the last few days, went even more pale, but his expression remained calm, and he nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”

Marie patted his shoulder, excused herself, and then she went to speak to the two Flowers, who immediately lit up and looked relieved.

Evan finished tidying up, and he went to give Carson his condolences one last time, and then he came to stand beside Rodney and John.

“Ready when you are,” he said quietly.

Rodney glanced at John, and John nodded, and together the three of them headed back to the lab.

Evan immediately retreated to the far end of the lab and set about cleaning, ostensibly to give John and Rodney privacy. So far all they’d done was kiss, hadn’t dared to go much further than that lest they get distracted again and Evan go running off. Rodney was seriously considering letting John send Evan to be locked in the minion barracks and guarded by the Jaffa while they went back to Rodney’s quarters, but if Evan was some kind of collaborator, leaving him with the Jaffa didn’t guarantee anything.

Evan did seem to genuinely care about the Flowers and the Garden. Maybe sending him to the Garden would be the answer. The Flowers all seemed to love him. They’d never give him a minute alone.

As it turned out, the world ending hadn’t ended Rodney’s sex drive, and John Sheppard was hot, and also interested in Rodney, and Rodney knew from grad school that a good orgasm was excellent stress relief, and given how alone he’d been for so long, mutual orgasms would be far better.

Rodney was so busy contemplating ways to get John alone that he missed what John said.

“Wait, what?”

“I think Evan murdered Carson’s mother.”

 _“What?”_ Rodney hissed.

John put a hand on his shoulder, kept his voice low but calm. “Evan always brings us those mugs with the bluebells painted on the side, right? Carson was drinking out of one. The same kind of mug was on Carson’s mother’s nightstand. If she was old, she might not have noticed if the tea tasted wrong - if Evan even used a poison that had a flavor.”

Rodney cast a wild look at Evan.

John leaned in, kissed him.

“Be calm,” he whispered, forehead pressed against Rodney’s, a parody of romance and intimacy. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Why he sneaked away, why we couldn’t find him.”

“Why would he murder Carson’s mother?” Rodney hissed.

“I’m not sure yet,” John murmured.

Rodney closed his eyes.

“But we’ll figure it out.”

After that, Rodney insisted on switching to water, that he was heeding Carson’s advice and cutting back on caffeine. The withdrawals were something awful, but he persevered, because it was almost impossible to poison water. John still followed Evan everywhere, so he could make sure Evan didn’t tamper with their water, and half the time they used the sink in the lab to fill an old plastic pitcher for their convenience.

John reported that Evan’s behavior continued to be perfectly ordinary, that he was friendly with the kitchen staff, the Flowers they encountered in the hallway, and even Carson, but Rodney was tense. He stopped talking to Evan about the research, set him to cleaning and cleaning and cleaning while John helped him pare down the signal to the one that would unlock an Ancient device without the Gene.

So Rodney didn’t know what to do when Evan caught him alone day while John was absorbed in some calculations by hand.

“You don’t have to figure this out for her.” Evan’s voice was low. He was making a sketch of another useless Ancient device the Jaffa had procured for them.

Rodney, poking through his work bench for his calipers, paused. “What?”

“Carson’s developing a gene therapy so people without the gene can have it.” Evan’s lips were barely moving, his head bowed. To the casual observer he was utterly absorbed in his sketching. “He has a theory that people from certain geographic regions are more likely to have the gene or have the therapy take even if they don’t have the gene. If you have the gene, you can work the tech and make Hathor and Kavanagh think they have control over it.”

Rodney wasn’t sure what he was hearing. “Why are you telling me this?”

“Carson trusts you. He wants you to try the gene therapy first.”

“Why are we whispering?” Rodney asked.

“Because,” Evan said, “we can’t trust John. First Prime O’Neill trusts him, so we can’t.”

Rodney stared at him.

“Keep calm,” Evan continued, voice still low.

“But -”

“I know you’re attracted to him, like him. But we can’t trust him.”

Rodney couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

But then the lab door swung open, and three Jaffa stepped into the lab.

“First Prime O’Neill wishes to see you,” they said to John.

John, startled out of his calculations, looked up, blinked. Then he rose to his feet, nodded, and followed the Jaffa out of the lab.

Evan kept his head down, kept sketching.

Rodney watched John go, his heart pounding.

John cast him a confused look, but then he affected his usual smirky smile and said, “Later, team.”

“Later,” Rodney echoed, a beat too late, and earned himself another odd look.

As soon as the door was closed, Evan said, “See?”

Rodney stared at the closed door, his heart still pounding. No. Impossible.

“So you’re part of the Resistance?” Rodney asked.

“We don’t have a name,” Evan said. “We’re fighting for humanity.”

Rodney thought of that execution, of Radek and Cameron Mitchell and that pretty Flower. Of course Evan knew all the Flowers. John didn’t know any of them, didn’t even know what country they were from.

Was it possible? Was John a collaborator?

There was only one way to find out.

For their next half-day, faux-weekend, Rodney sent Evan to check on the Flowers in the Garden, and he took John back to his quarters.

If John was a collaborator, well, at least Rodney would get a good fuck out of the deal.

He closed his eyes and let John kiss him and hoped Evan was wrong, was lying, was mistaken, was _something._

Afterward, Rodney and John lay together in Rodney’s bed, breathing hard, coming down from the dopamine and oxytocin high of orgasm. John was surprisingly cuddly, curled close to Rodney, smoothing one hand up and down his back.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” he said.

Rodney tensed.

John leaned in, pressed a kiss to Rodney’s throat, murmured in his ear.

“Carson’s developing a Nish’ta vaccine.”

“Nish’ta?” Rodney asked.

“The drug Hathor uses to control straight men and lesbians.”

“What about the vaccine?”

“We can use it to inoculate her Jaffa. The majority of them are former Stargate Command personnel. If we can get to O’Neill first, the rest will follow once they’re no longer doped up.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Rodney was utterly confused. John was collaborating with Carson. Evan was collaborating with Carson. One of them had to be lying.

“Evan’s ploy didn’t work. Yes, Carson’s mother’s death set him back emotionally, but he pushed through, finished the vaccine anyway.”

Rodney relaxed a fraction. He’d been right. John was telling the truth. Evan was lying. Rodney had to find a way to get rid of him. Maybe set him up, rat him out to Kavanagh. Kavanagh came by the labs on a regular basis, looking for some excuse to get rid of Rodney. Rodney would give him Evan if it bought him and John some time.

“What happens once the vaccine is ready?” Rodney asked.

“I have to inject O’Neill.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” Rodney asked. Icy fear crawled down his spine. Stupid question. If it didn’t work, John was dead.

John leaned in, pressed a kiss to the corner of Rodney’s mouth. “I got to share this with you at least once.”

Rodney pulled him in, kissed him with more fervor. “More than once.”

*

When work resumed at the lab, Rodney kept a wary eye on Evan as well. Evan knew John was suspicious of him, had given up on friendly overtures, but he still chatted to Rodney.

“So, this weekend, while I was in the Garden, I was talking to one of the Flowers, and one of them - his parents were scientists, Before - mentioned he’d be interested in interning with you,” Evan said. “He can’t be a Flower forever, and if he can retire gracefully, he’d like to do science. To honor his parents.”

 _If he can retire gracefully._ If he doesn’t die, Evan meant.

“Does he speak English?” Rodney asked.

Evan nodded. “Yeah. His English is really good.”

“I have my hands full with you two,” Rodney said.

“Well, Sheppard’s a mathematician, so he’s useful, but I’m just a Merry Maid,” Evan said. “Im has actual scientific training.”

Rodney considered. Any Flower would be loyal to Evan before Rodney. After the way Hathor had summarily executed one of the Flowers, would he be loyal to her?

“Does he have the Gene?” Rodney asked.

“No,” Evan said, then added, lower, “but he can if you want him to.”

Rodney glanced over his shoulder at John, who was copying down another round of equations. “I thought Carson wanted to test me first.”

“Carson understands your hesitation, and Im volunteered,” Evan said, keeping his voice low.

“I want to see it done myself,” Rodney said. “I want to see the procedure.”

Evan nodded. “I’ll arrange things with Carson.” And then he continued talking about his weekend with the Flowers, how there were new ones in the ranks, and how he’d taught his replacement some new tricks with makeup.

Rodney was torn. If what Evan was saying was true, then John was the traitor. But he took John into his bed that night and closed his eyes and let John kiss him and hoped he was wrong.

So the next morning, when a Jaffa arrived with a message, told them Carson had summoned them to his medical lab, Rodney’s heart plummeted into his shoes.

“Can I come with?” John asked.

The Jaffa, who’d once been a random airman Rodney saw around on base sometimes, hesitated, looked at Rodney.

“Of course,” Rodney said. “Come along. You wouldn’t get much done without me anyway.”

John inclined his head deferentially, like he always did when Jaffa were around. He made sure to keep himself between Evan and Rodney while they walked through the corridors and rode in the elevator. Cold dread was slowly spreading through Rodney’s limbs as they approached the lab. Was it true? Was John really a traitor to humanity?

Or had Evan somehow tricked Carson into revealing his secrets?

When they arrived at the lab, Carson was standing beside one of the exam cots. A Flower was sitting on the cot, watching them warily. Rodney recognized him. He was the cat-faced Flower with the red-brown hair who’d been forcibly silenced when he started crying after his friend was executed.

Carson smiled. “Hello, Rodney. Im here is in for a checkup before he’s assigned to your lab. Im, say hello to Dr. Rodney McKay.”

Im, whose expression was unreadable, inclined his head politely. “Hello, Dr. McKay.” He spoke English with only the faintest accent.

“Now, unfortunately, Im doesn’t have the Gene, but he does have useful scientific training,” Carson said, and Rodney was confused, but of course, Hathor and her loyal servants couldn’t know about the Gene therapy.

Did Im even know about it? Evan had said he was a volunteer, but did he know what he was volunteering for?

“Hello, Im,” Rodney said. “These are my assistants Evan - who you already know - and John. Sheppard. Evan calls him Sheppard.”

“You can call me John,” he said.

Im inclined his head again. “Hello, John.”

“Now, just so Rodney can be assured you’re in perfect health, let’s to the audience-friendly portions of your physical.”

Carson smiled, and Rodney settled in to watch him check Im’s breathing with a stethoscope, check his pulse and blood pressure, make him say _ah_ and let Carson get a good look down his throat and in his ears and up his nose.

Im submitted to the handling with disturbing placidness, but then what did Rodney expect from someone who was considered an object, a toy, a party favor or a treasure, to be displayed and used at the Goddess’s whim?

“You’re in excellent health, lad,” Carson said, patting Im on the shoulder. “I’m sure all that singing and dancing in the Garden keeps you fit, but I also know you all train relentlessly and don’t sleep nearly enough, so here’s a vitamin booster shot to get you started, all right?”

Im’s answer was to roll up one sleeve and extend his arm. Carson swiped at his bicep with a cotton ball and rubbing alcohol, uncapped a syringe with his teeth. Im didn’t watch the needle go in, but he didn’t flinch either.

“How long till the vitamins really kick in?” Evan asked.

John raised his eyebrows, surprised at the question.

“Give it twenty-four hours or so,” Carson said.

Rodney kept watching Evan and Carson, Carson and John. John had never been overly-friendly with Carson, but then if they were partners in some kind of secret mission, being too friendly would be suspicious, right? Evan and Carson seemed as friendly as ever, but still not too friendly. All this talk of vitamin shots was just - weird, though. Was Evan tricking Rodney? Was there no Gene therapy after all?

John hadn’t said anything about the Nish’ta vaccine in a while, but then when it was just the two of them not a lot of talking went on.

Carson put a bandage over the injection site, patted Im on the shoulder. “All right. Off to the lab with you.”

Im nodded, fixed his sleeve, rose up. Where John and Evan-level minions always wore white, the Flowers always wore black. Would Im be getting a white uniform now that he was working in the lab?

“All right,” Rodney said. “Let’s go back to the lab.”

If Evan weren’t working with Carson, how would he have arranged it so Carson was sending him a new minion? And why was Carson and not Kavanagh giving Rodney new minions? If Evan were a Collaborator, it’d be easy for him to ask Kavanagh to assign Rodney a new minion, and it’d be easy for him to arrange for Jaffa to summon them all at just the right time.

Back at the lab, Rodney set Evan to cleaning, which made Im frown for a moment, but he said nothing. Rodney had Im and John helping him build a frequency switch that should, theoretically, allow them to turn on the Ancient night light that they’d been experimenting on.

Im said, quietly, “Evan has very steady hands. He’d be better at this than me.” He was feeding soldering wire into a soldering gun while John held a work light and Rodney tried to affix a radio transmitter to the switch base.

John said, sharply, “Evan can keep doing what he’s doing.”

Im’s expression went blank once more.

Rodney said, “John, tilt that light a little higher.”

John obeyed.

When it was time to break for lunch, John had Im accompany both him and Evan down to the kitchens.

“Now that there’s an extra mouth to feed, we need more food and more people to carry it,” John explained.

Evan nodded, and Im nodded, and all three of them departed. They returned with food for all four of them. Im and Evan ate quietly. Rodney, who hated awkward silences, made awkward small talk with John.

John wasn’t much better at small talk than Im was, and he ended up interrogating Im about his past. As it turned out, Im had always wanted to be a dancer and performer, but both of his parents were scientists, so he’d received a lot of scientific training from them so he had something to fall back on in case being a performer didn’t pan out. Due to his parents’ science expertise, he’d moved around a lot as a child, had even lived in America for a few years before returning to Korea, and he’d gone to school in America, which was why his English was as good as it was.

Evan had stopped with the cutesy lunches, but today’s selection included apples that were cut in strange shapes. Evan something softly in Korean and handed the plate of apples to Im, who smiled.

“In English?” John asked.

“Ah - he cut the apples into shapes of rabbits,” Im said.

Rodney squinted at the apples, tilted his head. “I see it now - ears, curved body. What’s the purpose of apple-shaped rabbits? We’re not children.”

Im’s shoulders tightened. “It’s something my mother used to do when I was a child, to cheer me up.”

Rodney eyed him. “Are you sad?”

Im just looked at him for a long moment, then said to Evan, “You remembered. Thank you.”

“What’s the Korean word for rabbit?” Rodney asked finally, because why wouldn’t Im be sad? The entire world was sad.

“Tokki,” Im pronounced carefully.

After lunch they fell into a tentative working rhythm. Rodney did his best to distract Im from the tension between Evan and John by asking Im about his life in Korea and Korean words for random things, which Rodney couldn’t hope to remember but made the task - which was pretty mindless - less banal. Im naming the parts of a switch in Korean was impressive and was proof that he had decent scientific training, though more than once he confessed that he’d learned only the English versions of some words and only the Korean versions of others. Occasionally John remarked that certain words in Korean sounded like the same words in Japanese (promise, buckwheat noodles), but that earned him a flat, unreadable look from Im that Rodney was fast coming to suspect was disapproval or offense taken.

The switch was finished before supper, and Rodney tested it out. It didn’t actually work, but so long as John or Evan was hand, they could make it look like it worked, because it did emit a signal frequency that matched the one Rodney was pretending was the key signal and one of them could turn the device on and off when the switch was flipped. If Evan was the traitor, tried to sabotage the “demonstration” of the switch, John was a stronger Gene carrier, could stop him if needs be. Of course, as far as Im was concerned, the switch worked. Evan knew the switch was a dud, but he didn’t say anything to Im about it, which made Rodney wonder just what, if anything, Im knew about the Resistance.

Rodney tried not to think about what would happen if John wasn’t on his side.

After supper, John, Evan, and Im all headed down to the kitchens to return the used dishes. There were never leftovers. Even though Rodney ate better than ninety-nine percent of the world’s population, he never left anything on his plate, because he never knew when he might have to go hungry. Or need energy to fuel a cross-country hike to make an escape.

While the others were gone, Rodney turned on some music and cranked it up. Then he paced his lab, thinking. He was a genius, but he wasn’t Sherlock Holmes, and making deductions wasn’t his forte. Yes, science often required intuitive leaps of logic - what some naively called leaps of faith - to form a hypothesis to make an advancement, but that hypothesis was then subject to rigorous examination and experimentation to see if it held up.

John said Evan was a traitor to humanity, a Collaborator with the Goa’uld and the Jaffa. Evan said John was a Collaborator, was working with First Prime O’Neill. Rodney had heard of unmarked Jaffa mingling with humans as spies, but he had seen all of John, knew he wasn’t a Jaffa.

And then a thought struck him. What if John was a Goa’uld? Those snakes weren’t required to be all flashy eyes and demonically-possessed voices. They could pretend to be human, couldn’t they? They could access their host’s memories and pretend to be them. Unlike John, Evan could be either an unmarked Jaffa or an undercover Goa’uld. Maybe that was why the Flowers obeyed him. They didn’t trust him. They were afraid of him.

Rodney assigned various facts to different squares on the linoleum floor and paced back and forth between them. Evan had sneaked away at the same time as Carson’s mother had died, and one of the mugs Evan always served coffee in had been on her nightstand. Carson had never actually said he was giving Im any kind of Gene therapy. For all Rodney knew, Im had the Gene already.

Rodney’s head was spinning. How could he figure out who was telling the truth?

The other three returned.

They worked for a couple more hours, and then Rodney had John make sure Im and Evan made it back to their barracks. Im was still bunking with the Flowers. Evan was in some kind of other minion barracks close to the Flowers. Rodney waited in the lab, absently buffing the casing for the Ancient Switch. He’d sent an email to Kavanagh that the switch was completed and ready for preliminary testing. It worked with the night light but they hadn’t tried it on any other devices yet.

Of course, Kavanagh hadn’t replied.

John returned from making sure Evan and Im were locked away for the night, and then he followed Rodney back to his quarters. As they walked, Rodney reflected on how easy it was for John to lock up his fellow humans.

But then the Jaffa locked them both into Rodney’s quarters, and he did his best to forget everything but the scent of John’s skin, the taste of his lips, his hands on Rodney’s body.

So of course Jaffa dragged them both out of bed in the middle of the night. John came awake with a vengeance, lashed out. The Jaffa were strong, fast - and had American military combat training. They subdued John too damn easily while two more Jaffa hauled Rodney out of bed.

“Dress,” one of them ordered.

Rodney reached for his clothes, wary.

John struggled, was smacked across the face for it.

“Don’t,” Rodney protested.

“Dress,” the Jaffa said again.

Rodney pulled on his pants.

“Faster!”

Rodney obeyed. He’d barely tugged on his shirt when the Jaffa said,

“Dress him.”

He pointed to John.

John glared at the Jaffa, but then he met Rodney’s gaze, nodded. It was better than the Jaffa putting their hands on him, so Rodney helped John into his uniform one leg at a time, then one arm at a time.

The Jaffa dragged them into the hallway. They started hauling Rodney toward the lab. They hauled John in the opposite direction.

“Wait,” Rodney protested, but the Jaffa holding him barked at the Jaffa holding John, and he disappeared around a corner, glowering at his captors all the while.

Rodney supposed he shouldn’t have been surprised that Kavanagh was waiting in the lab with more Jaffa, but there the man was, with his irritating smirk and ugly glasses and greasy ponytail, standing beside Rodney’s primary workbench where the Ancient Switch was sitting. Evan was nowhere in sight.

But Im was there, standing in the corner, surrounded by Jaffa. His expression was ten times more unreadable than when John made culturally insensitive comments, but he was wearing a black Flower uniform and his hair was wildly mussed from sleep.

“I got your email,” Kavanagh said.

“This couldn’t have waited till morning?” Rodney protested.

“Wanted to catch you at your most honest,” Kavanagh drawled. “Didn’t realize you played for the other team, but Sheppard isn’t bad-looking. Maybe I’ll take a shot at him sometime.”

Rodney’s blood ran cold. “Don’t you _dare -”_

“Don’t forget,” Kavanagh said. “We all belong to the Goddess. She grants some of us the privilege of using others how we please.”

Im’s face went pale. His expression was still unreadable.

“I know what science is like,” Kavanagh said, “and I know you’re not as smart as you think you are. The Goddess deserves your very best work, not the ego-inflated puffery grad students use to crank out a thesis or dissertation. You said the switch works. I want to see it work.”

Rodney swallowed down his rage. “Then let me -”

“Not you,” Kavanagh said. “I don’t trust you not to have some kind of cheap trick up yourself.” He nodded to the Jaffa. “Check him.”

It was a small mercy, that when the Jaffa patted Rodney down they were as brusque and ungentle as airport security agents.

“Make sure he can’t touch anything,” Kavanagh added, and the Jaffa hauled Rodney to the one space in the lab that was out of arm’s length of, well, anything.

Kavanagh lifted his chin at Im. “You. You’ve only been here a short time. You’re not nearly smart enough to trick me, and you don’t have the Gene. I ran your initial tests myself. Twice. So - show me the switch.”

Jaffa dragged Im over to the workbench. They released one of his hands, and he used the edge of the table to push his sleeve back so Rodney could see clearly. Then he reached out, flipped the switch.

Rodney’s heart crawled into his throat. He had to remain calm, prepared to be indignant if it didn’t work, Kavanagh and his Jaffa goons must have broken it, they were trying to frame him -

The night light flickered to life.

Shock crossed Kavanagh’s face.

“Well, I’ll be damned.”

Rodney bit back his own surprised exclamation.

“Turn it off.”

Im flicked the switch and the light faded.

“And on again.”

Im obeyed.

Kavanagh made him demonstrate the switch half a dozen more times before he turned to Rodney. “Well, for once your work is worth your ego. Well done, McKay. The Goddess will be pleased. Your contributions to her saving of humanity will be remembered.”

“It doesn’t work on other devices yet,” Rodney said. “Not all devices work on the same signal.”

“But you can make more switches, or even a universal switch, like a universal remote.” It was a command, not a question or a suggestion.

Rodney nodded stiffly.

Kavanagh said, “Good night. Go celebrate. I know I will.” He winked lewdly, then spun on his heel and left the lab.

Some of the Jaffa followed. Two more Jaffa grabbed Im, likely to march him back to the Flower barracks. Rodney’s captors hauled him back to his own quarters. Rodney craned his neck, tried to see where Kavanagh had gone, whether it was toward the barracks where John slept or if Jaffa were headed to John’s barracks to fetch him or -

The Jaffa shoved Rodney into his room, slammed the door behind him, locked it.

Rodney crawled into bed, fretting about John.

And then he realized.

Im had the Gene. Kavanagh was smart enough to run a DNA analysis, and he’d done it recently on Im, and he thought Im didn’t have the Gene. Which meant that Carson had given Im some kind of Gene therapy. Which meant that Evan was telling the truth and John was the traitor. Kavanagh wouldn’t really hurt John, a fellow Collaborator. He was just trying to scare Rodney.

No matter.

Rodney refused to be scared. Im had the Gene and he was working with Evan and the Resistance. Evan had been honest all along, and Rodney had let John treat him terribly. No matter. Rodney knew who he could and couldn’t trust, and he could start helping the Resistance in their struggle, start getting them access to Ancient tech they needed.

It took him forever to fall asleep.

*

The next morning when Rodney arrived in the lab, John and Im and Evan were already there, breakfast trays on one of the side benches.

John crossed the lab, caught Rodney by the shoulders, looking him over. “Are you all right? What happened?”

Rodney looked John up and down, and relief curled through his limbs when he saw that John was unharmed, that there was no sign of Kavanagh having visited him in the night. And then he remembered. Kavanagh probably wouldn’t have hurt John. If he’d gone to visit John, it would have been to talk to him, collaborate with him further, get information from him.

A sudden terrible thought struck Rodney. What if John and Kavanagh were lovers?

No. Just because they were both collaborators didn’t mean - John would never - what did Rodney really know about John, besides that he was in the Air Force before, just like O’Neill, who seemed to trust him and kept wanting to meet with him?

“I’m fine,” Rodney said. “Are _you_ all right?” Because John would expect him to be concerned.

“They didn’t hurt me,” John said.

“Kavanagh wanted to test the switch.”

John’s eyes went wide. “What happened?”

Rodney couldn’t tell him about the Gene therapy. “I’m still here,” he said. “We’re all still here. We should work on a switch for the other device, the little holographic projector, see if we can’t isolate the power-up frequency for that.”

John reached up, curved a hand along Rodney’s jaw. He asked in a low voice, “Are you really okay?”

Rodney nodded. “I promise, I’m fine.”

“I want to make sure for myself,” John said.

Rodney swallowed hard. Later. Naked, John meant. He managed a smile.

It was Evan who broke in. “We should eat our breakfast before it gets cold.”

So Im hadn’t told John about what had happened, that he’d been there. Had Im told Evan? Did Evan know anyway?

While they ate, standing at the side workbench, Evan said, “I’m glad you’re okay, Rodney.”

“Thanks,” he muttered. Louder, he said, “All right, now that we know how to isolate the on-off frequency for an Ancient device, let’s see if we can’t streamline the process. Maybe once we’ve isolated the on-off frequency for multiple devices we can build some kind of universal remote. Im - help John streamline the regression process so we can find the frequency faster. Evan, help me diagram this projector.”

Im nodded and went to grab the binder of handwritten copies of Rodney and John’s calculations. John caught Rodney’s eye and raised his eyebrows, questioning. Rodney nodded, trying to be reassuring. He could handle things with Evan.

Once Im and John were on the other side of the room, working quietly, a couple of notebooks and calculators between them, Rodney took the chance to speak to Evan, who was sketching intently.

“The Gene therapy worked on Im.”

“So he said.”

“Tell Carson I want it next. Im looks unharmed despite his encounter with Kavanagh. But if Kavanagh suspects or just wants to be a bigger asshole than usual -”

“I’ll pass on the message.” Evan kept his voice low, barely moved his lips when he spoke. Had he been a ventriloquist before?

Rodney nodded tightly. “Thanks.”

They worked until lunch. Rodney was again left alone while the other three went to fetch it, and he spent the brief private time pondering how to handle things with John now that he knew what he knew about John, now that Kavanagh was watching him more closely, waiting for more results. If he pushed John away, would Kavanagh crack down further? Could he withdraw from John without alienating him? Because John had been right about one thing - the best way to make sure Evan didn’t get up to something was to keep an eye on him.

Keep your enemies closer and all that.

Rodney was non-plussed when the other three returned from the kitchens with some kind of boiled cabbage in red sauce and sushi.

“I don’t like sushi,” he said.

“It’s not sushi, it’s _gimbap,”_ Im said, wearing that unimpressed, flat expression.

“And kimchi,” Evan said. “The kimchi was made fresh today, and Im helped make the gimbap.”

John said, in a low voice, “Really, it’s not the same as sushi. And for a while the Japanese did to the Koreans what the Goa’uld are doing to us, so -”

“Does it have citrus in it?” Rodney asked.

Im raised his eyebrows.

“Of course not,” Evan said. “I made sure.”

Roney could trust him. “Right. Well - thank you, Im. For helping prepare this meal. I - are there forks?” Because John and Evan and Im all had chopsticks.

Evan handed him a fork.

“Thank you.”

“So,” John asked, “what’s the plan after lunch?”

Rodney had intended that the plan after lunch be him and Evan working on more diagrams and measurements of the Ancient hologram projector while John and Im finalized the regression series, and then as a group they could brainstorm, see if they couldn’t design a more streamlined process for figuring out the key frequencies and building switches. He sent Im and John to one end of the lab, and he and Evan were at the other, Evan making more sketches while Rodney took measurements and marked them on the completed sketches.

He angled himself so his back was to John, so John couldn’t see what he was saying or doing.

“Did you manage to get a message to Carson?” he asked.

Evan nodded.

“When can we do the treatment?”

“Now, if you like.” Evan held out a hand, shifted his arm, and something dropped out of his sleeve and into his palm. A slender syringe.

“How? With the others -?”

“Doesn’t have to be in the arm, or even in a vein. Can be in your thigh, like an epi pen,” Evan said. “Think you can hold still, not flinch, not make a noise?”

Rodney glanced over his shoulder at John and Im. They were both still working. He turned to Evan, nodded.

Evan handed him the syringe.

Rodney took a deep breath, went to uncap it.

“Hey!” John knocked the syringe out of his hand. He turned, grabbed Evan by the wrist, dragged him aside. “What the hell are you doing to Rodney?” He sounded furious.

“Nothing!” Evan protested, with the same wincing fearfulness he always used when Jaffa were getting rough with him. He was a damn good actor.

John grabbed him by the throat. “Wrong answer.”

Evan’s gaze flicked over to Rodney, and the fear vanished, replaced by something else, something cold.

John saw it too. He squeezed.

Evan reacted, and what happened was too fast for Rodney to process. It ended with John and Evan in the middle of the lab, both in fighting stances, ready to throw down. Evan had a nasty red welt on his throat. John’s nose was bleeding.

“You have Air Force hand-to-hand combat training,” he said.

“Same training you had,” Evan said, tone even, all traces of fear gone.

Dread curled low in Rodney’s gut, cold and heavy.

John said, “He’s Jaffa. Unmarked. It’s why he doesn’t live with me in the barracks, why he never lets me check his wounds, why he heals so fast.”

He and Evan tussled frantically. When John managed to pin Evan to the floor, he shouted for Rodney.

“Quick! Get his symbiote!”

For one moment, Rodney froze, because he’d seen those hideous belly pouches with the snakes inside them, but John shouted for him again, and Rodney scrambled close, knelt beside Evan, rucked up his white uniform top.

Evan was human.

And he had really impressive abs.

Rodney stared. John stared.

And then Evan bucked and somehow got his legs around John’s neck, and he squeezed, and John went limp, and then Evan was on his feet.

Rodney scrambled to his feet, backed away. John was lying on the floor, unmoving.

“Wait, Evan, please, I’m sorry,” Rodney began.

Evan pounced on him, pinned him against the wall. He drew a syringe out of his pocket, uncapped it with his teeth.

“No - don’t - that’s so unhygienic -” was the only protest Rodney could manage.

Evan jabbed him in the arm.

John dragged him backward, slammed him into the workbench.

Rodney howled when the needle was ripped out of him.

“What the hell did you do?” John demanded.

Evan’s answer was gibberish. Garbled.

No.

It was the same thing that the Flower had said right before he died.

And Rodney remembered. Evan was part of the Resistance. John wasn’t.

He’d always said he was doing what he had to, to survive.

Then Im was on John, dragging him off of Evan and flinging himself in front of Evan, determined to protect him.

“No,” John said, reaching for Im. “Get away from Evan. Even if he’s not a Jaffa, he’s a -”

“Rodney,” Evan said, “call for a Jaffa. Tell them John attacked you. None of them are in on O’Neill’s plan. They’ll listen to you.”

“O’Neill?” John echoed, looking puzzled.

Evan looked straight at him. “Your contact with the Jaffa. Traitor.”

“I’m not a traitor,” John snapped. “Rodney, listen to me -”

“I know Evan’s not a traitor,” he said quietly.

Shock flared in John’s eyes. “He stabbed you with a needle. He tried to poison you.”

“He hurt me, yes, but he wasn’t trying to kill me,” Rodney said.

“Whatever he said, he’s lying,” John insisted.

Rodney shook his head. “So far everything he’s told me is true. You, though - nothing you’ve said has been corroborated. You say Carson’s working on a Nish’ta vaccine to use against O’Neill and the former Air Force Jaffa, but I’ve never seen you talk to Carson, only to O’Neill.”

John turned a vicious glare on Evan. “What did you _say_ to him?”

“I told him the truth,” Evan said. “The traitor to humanity is you.”

John shook his head. “No, Rodney, please.”

Im said, “What if they’re both telling the truth?”

Rodney looked at him. “What?”

“What if they’re both telling the truth?” Im asked. “It’s a common tactic, when organizing a resistance. Don’t let the left hand know what the right is doing.”

Rodney hadn’t even considered that. He’d been so wrapped up in his emotions and John and the notion that John might have betrayed him that he’d been thinking in black and white, in false dichotomies, in extremes.

“How will I know if they’re both telling the truth?” Rodney asked.

Evan went and turned on the 1812 Overture, cranked it up.

Im reached into his pocket, drew out a small device that looked like a Goa’uld communication ball but was the silver-gray of many Ancient devices. He handed it to Evan. Then he wrote on a notepad. “This will scramble surveillance for seven minutes.”

“Why seven?” Rodney wrote beneath. They’d destroy the notepad later.

Im shrugged.

John reached into his pocket, drew out another of the same device.

Evan had a third.

He and John stared at each other, eyes wide.

Rodney scribbled quickly. “Let’s just use the one for now, use the others later. We can tell Kavanagh that experimenting with a switch shorted things out.”

John took the notepad from him. “What about the footage from our fight?”

Im wrote, “I’ll take care of that.”

Evan shut off the music. Im activated the device.

*

“You’re an Air Force officer?” John asked.

“Captain Evan Lorne, SG-9,” Evan said.

“But how - with the Flowers -?” John asked.

Evan shook his head. “Not important. Carson finished the Gene therapy. Im has the Gene now. I just gave Rodney his dose. He should have the Gene in twenty-four hours.”

“Can we give all of our people the Gene?” John asked.

“Carson says it won’t take for everyone,” Evan said. “Nish’ta vaccine?”

“To get O’Neill and the other military men and women back on our side,” John said. “Jackson’s probably a lost cause.”

“What’s the plan after that?” Rodney asked.

“That’s need-to-know,” Evan and John said at the same time.

“If I’m going to help out, I need to know,” Rodney said.

Evan and John looked at each other.

Im said, “To send Hathor through the gate to an Asgard-protected planet. Thor’s Hammer will destroy the symbiote, and we will be free.”

“So Radek and Mitchell and that Flower who tried to get through the gate -”

“Min,” Im said.

“They were - what were they doing, trying to dial an Asgard-protected planet? They got it destroyed.”

“While everyone was focused on the execution, Miko put a bug in the dialing system,” Evan said. “So we can dial the gate remotely.”

John glanced at his fancy military watch. “Ninety seconds.”

How had Rodney never noticed? Evan had the same type of watch.

“Are you in?” Im asked.

Rodney said, “Yes.”

*

“Why did you think I was a traitor?” John asked.

He and Rodney were alone in the lab after Evan and Im had returned to their respective barracks.

“I didn’t, at first,” Rodney said. He sank down in one of the desk chairs. “You told me Evan murdered Carson’s mother, and I believed you. It made sense. He was unaccounted for during the murder, and that mug on her nightstand - it was the same kind he always brings us coffee in. When he told me you were the traitor, I didn’t believe him. But then the Gene therapy worked on Im, and I thought, if Evan was telling the truth all along, you must have been lying.”

John looked at him for a long moment. “Then - today. You knew the Gene therapy had worked. When I told you to help me with Evan -”

“I still wanted to believe you,” Rodney said. “I just - reacted.”

“Why was it either-or? Im saw the other option.” John raised his eyebrows.

“I guess - Evan was the one who framed it in terms of either-or. And then I just - I wanted to believe you _so much,_ and I -” Rodney shook his head, threw his hands up. “I don’t know, okay? I don’t know what I was thinking. I was just - these past few couple of years have been miserable, and then you came along, and you were - pardon the cliché - a light in the darkness. If you weren’t really light, then all that was left was darkness. I couldn’t stand the thought of that.”

Another heavy silence settled between them.

“You helped me even when you believed I might be a traitor,” John said finally.

“Yes, it was irrational. Sometimes even my feelings override my intellect, all right? I’m a genius, not a robot.” Rodney crossed his arms over his chest, defensive.

John studied him, then smiled, leaned in. “Glad to know you have feelings for me too.” He kissed Rodney softly.

 _Feelings for me too,_ John had said. That meant he had feelings for Rodney.

Rodney kissed him back. “Come on. Let’s go back to my room.”

*

Now that Evan and John trusted each other and John trusted Im, they could get more things done because John didn’t have to go with them everywhere, which meant Evan could fetch food and Im could take messages to Carson under guise of bringing him tea from Evan and they could work on getting first O’Neill, then the rest of the Air Force Jaffa inoculated against Hathor’s crazy mind-bending pheromones.

(“Why did you think I was a traitor?” John asked Evan.

“I remember you, from flight school. You were married. Susceptible to the Nish’ta.”

“Divorced now,” John said, shooting Rodney a look. Then he eyed Evan. “But you -”

“Don’t ask, don’t tell, captain.”

“Who am I going to tell, captain?”

“O’Neill, maybe?”

“Not important right now. But - flight school? I don’t remember you.”

“That’s why Carson picked me. No one does.”

“You’re cute, though. Like a puppy. Everyone loves puppies.”

“Thanks. The puppies I sleep with at night will be very flattered to know that I look just like them.”

Im said, “You have puppies?”

“Sarcasm,” Rodney said. “He’s being sarcastic.”)

Their use of the Ancient anti-surveillance device didn’t go unnoticed - or unpunished. Kavanagh showed up at the lab, demanded to know what had happened. Rodney managed to fumble his way through the story about how one of the switches caused a system glitch. The fact that they had another switch half-built lent credence to his story, but Kavanagh didn’t care.

Evan stepped forward, offered to take Im’s punishment for him. And John - he offered to take Rodney’s. If Rodney thought Im’s blank expression when someone said something offensive was bad, the look on his face while the Jaffa worked Evan over was worse. When Evan, bleeding and bruised, finally staggered to his feet, John stepped forward.

The Jaffa swung at him. John hit the floor with a heavy thud.

Rodney closed his eyes.

A hand closed over his wrist, squeezed.

“Watch,” Im said in a low voice. “They’ll punish him worse if you don’t.”

Rodney opened his eyes and saw Kavanagh looking right at him, smirking.

“Remember this,” Im said, “so you can do what must be done when the time comes.”

Rodney swallowed hard and nodded.

When the Jaffa finally stopped, they stepped back into formation. John lay on the floor, unmoving. Kavanagh spun on his heel and strode out of the lab, and the Jaffa followed.

As soon as the door was closed, Rodney and Im rushed to John’s side.

He was breathing fast and shallow, eyes squeezed shut. Blood dripped from his nose and mouth but thankfully not his ears.

“We need to get him to Carson,” Rodney said.

Evan staggered over to them. “Wait. We need to clean him up before we take him through the halls. Don’t give Kavanagh the satisfaction of letting people see him like this.”

“You need to get cleaned up too,” Im said.

Evan nodded. “Go get my box.”

Im nodded and left the lab in a hurry. Evan and Rodney helped John over to one of the workbenches, hoisted him up onto it. Evan peeled John out of his bloody uniform top. He balled it up and shoved it at Rodney.

“Get me some warm water.”

Rodney scrambled for the sink, wetted the shirt down with the hottest water he could get out of the faucet. Then he scrubbed the blood off of John’s face and torso while Evan checked him over.

“Couple of broken ribs, I think. All we can do is tape him up. Go get him a clean shirt?”

Rodney shook his head. “I’m not leaving him.”

“I can’t go out there like this.”

Rodney eyed Evan for a moment, then nodded, started for the door. “Wait. I don’t know where John sleeps. Not exactly.”

“The Jaffa can tell you.”

Rodney patted John’s hand nervously. “I’ll be right back.” Then he hurried out of the lab.

The Jaffa who stood guard in the hallway pointed Rodney toward one of the barracks, which was a bunch of bunks. He found John’s bunk after another minion pointed it out, and he pawed through the pile of clothes folded at the foot of John’s mattress till he found a clean uniform top. John only had three changes of clothes to get through the week. Who did all the laundry for the minions?

No matter. John was injured.

When Rodney got back to the lab, Im had returned. He had what looked like a fishing tackle box with him, which he set on the workbench beside John. He also pressed a tea towel full of ice against John’s face.

“For the bruising,” he said.

Rodney winced. John’s face was already mottled with bruising, swollen along his cheek and jaw.

Evan had shed his own shirt, cleaned off the blood, had somehow managed to avoid getting any blood on his uniform.

“What now?” Rodney asked.

“Let me get John cleaned up some more, and we can go. Get the clean shirt on him.” Evan squirmed back into his own shirt.

“I can dress myself,” John muttered, slurring, which made Rodney afraid his jaw was broken or that he’d been concussed.

Im’s expression was sorrowful. “I know. Let us help you.”

John cast Evan a look. “You took a double dose of this. You’re crazy.”

“Once we get you to Carson it’ll be fine,” Evan said. He shuffled over to John, and Im flipped open the tackle box.

It was full of makeup.

“The hell?” John asked.

“Cover-up,” Evan said. “You think Flowers have never performed after a beating?”

John flicked a glance at Im.

Im said, “Give me the ice. Dry your face.”

John obeyed, and then Evan said, “Close your eyes. Relax.”

John looked at Rodney.

Rodney said, “Hurry up. Carson needs to see you.”

“I’ll make it fast,” Evan promised. “It’s not like you need to look good under lights.”

Rodney watched, awed and a little horrified, as Evan uncapped pots of powder, laid out an array of sponges and brushes, and went to work. Under Evan’s careful hands, John’s wounds and bruises disappeared. In fact, his skin looked smoother, brighter, healthier.

Rodney wondered how many other people did the same thing on a regular basis, covered their wounds with makeup, covered other dirty secrets with powder and paint and youthful vigor.

“Go,” Evan said. “I’ll clean up here.”

Im nodded to Rodney, ducked under John’s arm and helped him off the bench.

John shook him off. “I’m injured, not dead.” And he walked out of the lab.

Im and Rodney followed him. He walked tall and proud, and they headed for the elevator. John told the Jaffa he wanted to speak to Carson, and the Jaffa summoned the elevator.

“You okay?” Rodney asked. He reached out, curled a hand through John’s.

John squeezed his hand. “Okay enough.”

The elevator doors opened, and Rodney went ahead.

“Hey, Carson, just came by to say hi,” Rodney said, “and ask for any scans you have of the Ancient Gene and the proteins it produces. 3D models would be better.”

Carson looked up, smiled at Rodney, and then the smile slid off his face when he looked at John and Im.

But he said, voice still pleasant, “Please, do come in. Im, please fetch some tea from the kitchens?” He beckoned to John, patted the nearest exam cot.

John climbed onto it with a wince.

“What happened?” Carson asked in a low voice.

“Kavanagh and his goons,” Rodney said tightly. “He probably has broken ribs. Evan insisted on painting him up so he looked unscathed.”

Carson nodded. “Aye, wise choice. Let’s get you to an x-ray.” He beckoned to the head nurse, Marie, the one who also spoke Korean.

“This way, Captain,” she said.

“No wheelchair?” John hopped off the cot, landed with another wince.

“And ruin the effect of Evan’s fine makeup job?” She raised an eyebrow. “Come on.” John followed her into one of the side rooms where the x-ray machine was.

Im appeared with a tea tray and Evan on his heels.

“How are you?” Carson asked, eyeing him.

Im shook his head. “They didn’t touch me. Evan stepped up.”

“They didn’t do much to my face, hence no makeup,” Evan said. “Pretty sure I’m not as bad off as John. Bruised ribs at the most.”

Carson crowded in, fished his penlight out of his pocket. Im and Rodney came closer as well, Im ostensibly with tea, Rodney ostensibly out of concern.

“Why did Kavanagh do this?”

Evan said, “We used an anti-surveillance device to talk.”

Carson went pale.

“John and I know,” Evan said. “Two separate cells.”

Carson looked away for a moment. Then he resumed shining his penlight in Evan’s ear. “I was only trying to protect you.”

“I know,” Evan said. “I know you’ve paid the highest price out of all of us.”

“Price?” Rodney asked.

“His mother,” Im said softly.

Pain crossed Carson’s face, but then his expression was just as steely and unreadable as Im’s at his worst. “Hathor can’t use her against me anymore. She was old and in pain. It was best for everyone.”

Rodney stared at him. Was Carson saying what Rodney thought he was saying?

“Rodney’s in,” Evan said, “and now Im and I can help John.”

Carson nodded. “All right.”

The nurse returned with John in tow. “Couple of broken ribs, as predicted. Thoughts?”

“Tape them up,” Carson said. He fixed Evan and John with stern looks. “And keep your heads down. We’re getting close.”

Close to executing their plan.

*

The plan had more moving parts than Rodney had ever realized. He found out, over the following weeks, just how ornate the plan was, and how Carson was some kind of insane mastermind for thinking it all up and pulling it off. Of course, he had John and Evan as his lieutenants, and both of them were frighteningly competent. Evan had build a network of informants on base, mostly minions and Flowers, who let him know who was where at all times, and he had a working schedule so they could look for security breaches. That was how multiple bands of rebels had made runs at the gate. John was an insidious charmer, had First Prime O’Neill eating out of the palm of his hand - because they were alike, Before, Evan said. The kind of cocky _Top Gun_ jet jockeys who Hollywood loved but who usually struggled in Big Air Force.

That first group who’d made a run at the gate - Radek, Mitchell, the Flower named Min - were a distraction, had dialed an uninhabited planet just so Miko could plant a virus in the gate dialing system so they could dial it remotely. Mitchell, John, and Evan had all been in the same class at flight school; Mitchell and Evan had gone to the Academy together.

The second team who’d made a run at the gate - Woeste, Menard, Holland - had been comprised of members of Evan’s old gate team and John’s best friend from flight school. They’d been a distraction so Miko could plant another virus in the gate dialing system - one that locked other people out and allowed her to speed-dial a single address: to an Asgard-protected planet with a Hammer of Thor installed near the gate.

The third team who’d made a run at the gate had been some of Miko’s cohorts. They’d installed the device that would allow for a power increase necessary to speed-dial the gate.

A fourth team was going to have to make a run at the gate. Multiple runs at the gate meant that the Jaffa response time to runs at the gate were decreasing, and Carson needed a sense of what their best response time was. Once John vaccinated O’Neill, they could see about vaccinating some of the other former Stargate Command personnel, but some of Hathor’s Jaffa were recruits from other planets she’d conquered, and they weren’t under the influence of the Nish’ta.

Rodney learned everything in bits and pieces as he worked on producing more switches for more Ancient Devices. So far he’d managed to stick to producing switches for innocuous devices, like the holo projector and the night light and what amounted to an Ancient blow-dryer. Each switch required a separate frequency, and so far they hadn’t found a master frequency, so separate switches were required for, well, everything. Rodney had also posited that certain functions on more complex devices - that required more than a simple on and off - would require multiple switches, and to that end he was building a dimmer switch for the night light.

Kavanagh came by to check often, looming non-Earth Jaffa accompanying him. He poked through the switches and half-built components. Sometimes he poked through the binders of handwritten equations, but since Rodney had kept everything, every failure mixed in with every success, a cursory look wouldn’t give Kavanagh anything to use against him. Not that Kavanagh needed evidence. He had Hathor’s ear.

“I don’t think he’s on the Nish’ta,” John said one night, after Kavanagh left the lab.

He, Rodney, Evan, and Im would talk quietly during meals.

Im made a face. “Who’d want to sleep with him anyway?”

“Hathor doesn’t only use the Nish’ta for breeding partners,” John said. “Sometimes just for control. But I don’t think he’s on it. You’ve seen Jackson, O’Neill. Those blank looks they get. Kavanagh’s too - alert.”

Icy dread curled down Rodney’s spine. How could Kavanagh turn on his own people like that? Surely he understood that he was just as subject to Hathor’s cruel whims as the rest of them.

Sometimes Carson joined them for tea, like he’d done with Rodney before, and that was when the real planning could happen.

“Once we cure O’Neill,” John said in a low voice (once he risked his life to stab O’Neill with a vaccine, he meant), “how can we turn him human again?”

“We can’t, not right away,” Carson said. “The Goa’uld symbiote the Jaffa carry allow them to sense other symbiotes. If we turn O’Neill back into a human again, the other Jaffa will know. But once all this is done - the sarcophagus. We remove the symbiotes and place our people in the sarcophagus one at a time.”

“What’s our time-table looking like?” Evan asked.

“We’re on schedule,” Carson said. “Things are only going to get harder from here on out.”

“How?” Rodney asked.

First, Im would no longer be working for Rodney full-time. The other Flowers needed the Gene therapy, and that meant ‘vitamin shots’ before being sent to the lab. Second, the Flowers were gearing up for some kind of massive performance, and Im needed to be with the others for rehearsals, so Rodney was subject to a parade of Flowers of varying degrees of scientific training. Chae, the skinny one with the soft pink hair, had little scientific training, but he had incredibly steady hands, and once he learned how to use a soldering iron, he could be left to switch construction in peace. Heon, who was Im’s best friend with the curly faux-blond hair and dimples, had little scientific training, but he was a fast runner, so Rodney had him all over the base, running messages back and forth to other labs, also fetching meals and drinks and small snacks.

Third, John had to risk his life to vaccinate O’Neill.

The night before John was scheduled to execute his portion of the mission, he spent all night in Rodney’s quarters. They made love fast and frantic, then long and slow, for hours and hours, memorizing each other’s scent, touch, taste. Neither of them slept, and the next morning in the lab, Evan took one look at them, then dispatched Seok, the latest of the Flowers in the lab, to fetch some more coffee.

“This is it,” John said.

Rodney clutched his wrist. “Do you have to? Can’t Evan -”

“This is my mission,” John said firmly. “I’ve done the groundwork on this. O’Neill trusts me, not Evan, because I was never part of the SGC before this. He thinks I don’t have a dog in this fight. The Goa’uld were never my enemy before.”

“John -”

“Don’t worry.” John’s grin was cocky and sexy and Rodney wanted to hate him for it. “See you in a bit.”

Seok returned with a tray of coffee mugs - and Jaffa on his heels.

“First Prime O’Neill commands your presence,” one of them said to John.

John nodded, gently disentangled himself from Rodney’s grip, and headed for the door, let the Jaffa lead him away.

Seok, Evan, and Rodney drank their coffee, watching the door. Evan was anxious. Rodney was terrified.

And then more Jaffa arrived.

“First Prime O’Neill demands your presence,” they said.

Evan started forward, placing himself between the Jaffa and Rodney lest they become violent. Seok was right on his heels. Compared to Rodney the young man was ridiculously fit and muscular. Rodney had admired his physique before, when he’d sat in on performances in the Garden. Before he’d tried to become a performer, he’d had aspirations of being a professional martial artist, so after Evan, he was best equipped to protect Rodney if needs be. (Seok barely spoke English, but he spoke French, and he was able to speak to Rodney and John that way.)

 _Focus,_ Rodney told himself. He had to stay focused, alert. If John’s mission had failed, Rodney was still a critical component of the plan. Evan was willing to sacrifice himself to ensure Rodney survived. The Gene therapy had taken in enough of the Flowers that if they needed to launch Ancient tech-based weapons at Hathor from the inside, it could be done, but that would be months down the road.

And Rodney had to be calm, like nothing untoward was happening in his lab so John wouldn’t be suspected of rebellion, like he hadn’t even suspected John was a traitor, a rebel if John was in trouble.

Rodney had never been to the Jaffa barracks or wherever it was they stayed. As it turned out, First Prime O’Neill had been granted VIP on-base quarters.

The Jaffa who’d summoned them stood on either side of the door as guards, leaving the three of them to step inside.

Where John was standing beside O’Neill.

He was still alive. He was unharmed.

Rodney wanted to run to him, but he forced himself to remain calm. Seok and Evan bowed respectfully, and Rodney followed.

The door swung shut.

O’Neill sank down on the edge of the bed.

“Deep breaths, sir,” John said.

“I have a damn snake in me!” O’Neill’s dark eyes were wide and he was close to hyperventilating.

“And you know why we have to leave it there,” John said firmly. “But once all this is done, we can put you in the sarcophagus, fix you up good as new.”

“As soon as I skin a snake,” O’Neill said darkly. He glanced up. “Captain Lorne?”

“Sir.”

“You’re in on this?”

“Since day one, sir.”

O’Neill flicked a glance at Seok. “And you got young Korean supermodels involved?”

“A lot of them have some military training from their mandatory service,” Evan said.

Rodney looked at Seok, surprised, but his expression was politely blank.

O’Neill nodded. “Right. Forgot about that. Forgot about a lot of things since apparently I got roofied by a snakehead and then turned into a Jaffa. What’s the plan? Where are Carter and Daniel and Teal’c?”

Evan swallowed hard. “Sir, you need to hold it together, because there are other Airmen and Marines we need to vaccinate and rescue -”

O’Neill made an impatient gesture. “Where’s the rest of SG-1?”

“Captain Carter was executed after she, Dr. Fraiser, and some of the other women on base tried to lead a rebellion with Teal’c. Apparently born-and-bred Jaffa are immune to Nish’ta, so he could see through Hathor’s manipulation of the rest of you,” Evan said. “Teal’c was also executed.”

O’Neill’s expression went dangerously blank.

Rodney knew he wore his emotions on his sleeve, and people found that irritating, but that blankness O’Neill and other soldiers got was downright scary. Evan ducked his head, hands clasped behind his back, posture deferential. John said nothing. Seok said nothing, but then he probably didn’t even know what was going on.

“And Daniel?” O’Neill asked finally.

“He’s still human, hasn’t been snaked, but he’s basically drugged twenty-four-seven, and he’s Hathor’s official consort,” Evan said.

O’Neill squeezed his eyes shut. “Dammit, Danny.” He took a deep breath. “All right. What’s the plan?”

“We need to vaccinate the rest of the SGC personnel who are Jaffa,” John said. “Then we need to vaccinate as many non-Jaffa personnel as possible.”

O’Neill nodded. “Well, I spent enough time around Teal’c, I’m pretty sure I can keep pretending to be a First Prime. Can we do it one at a time?”

“That’s our best bet,” Evan said. “So they can have a moment to process. Seems like the drug acts kind of like rohypnol - no one remembers what happened while they were on it.”

“How long has it been?” O’Neill asked.

“Nine hundred and seventy days,” Evan said.

Rodney and John stared at him.

“That’s a very precise number,” O’Neill said slowly.

“Have you been keeping count?” Rodney asked.

Evan shook his head. “No, but the Flowers are putting on a special celebratory performance, for the one thousandth day of Hathor’s reign. Performance is in thirty days.” He spoke to Seok in careful Korean, and Seok nodded. “Yeah, thirty days.”

“Almost three years.” O’Neill looked sick. He went to press a hand to his gut, paused, curled his hand into a fist. Then he eyed John and Evan. “Have you two already been vaccinated?”

“Ah, no, you were Carson’s first human trial,” John said.

“Why didn’t she drug you?” O’Neill asked.

“I was offworld when the invasion went down,” Evan said. “When I came through the gate - well, most of us don’t have straight-up military patches on our uniforms, and everyone else was drugged or dead, who might recognize me. I pretended I was a civilian and a painter, and she kept me alive.”

“Why would she want a painter?” O’Neill asked.

“To paint the Flowers,” Evan said.

O’Neill looked at Rodney. “Are you _sure_ he wasn’t drugged?”

Rodney had heard of O’Neill’s sarcasm - the man was famous for it - but he’d just learned his entire gate team was dead.

“There’s a lot you missed while you were under the influence, sir,” Evan said finally. “Sheppard can bring you up to speed. In the meantime -”

“In the meantime get out there and keep your noses clean and bring me more vaccine so I can save our men and women,” O’Neill said.

“Yes, sir,” Evan said, and Rodney realized - he looked relieved. To have his commanding officer back.

John looked relieved too, and for the first time, Rodney looked at John and saw that he was a military officer. He stood differently, in O’Neill’s presence. Also he’d managed to vaccinate O’Neill successfully.

“Go,” O’Neill said, and Evan inclined his head respectfully, and then he grabbed Rodney and Seok and hustled them out of the room. The two Jaffa peeled away from the door to escort them back to the labs.

*

John didn’t come back to the lab till supper, and when he did, he looked exhausted - and grim.

“What’s wrong?” Rodney asked in a low voice. He’d gotten clever and started playing music in the background that, to human ears, was perfectly ordinary, but to the Goa’uld surveillance Kavanagh had in the lab, was mildly disruptive, so audio recording was poor even though visual recording seemed perfectly fine.

“O’Neill’s in a rough spot is all,” John said. “He woke up after nearly three years of oblivion to learn that two of his closest friends are dead, the third is a drug addict who is raped on a regular basis, and he’s been complicit in crimes against humanity.”

Rodney winced. “When you put it that way.”

Seok handed John a plate of food, then spoke to Evan, bowed, and ducked out of the lab.

“We still good to proceed?” Evan asked, digging into his own food.

John nodded. “Yeah. We’re pushing forward.”

Pushing forward meant continuing the production of Ancient switches while John, O’Neill, and vaccinated Jaffa continued to vaccinate other Jaffa. Some of the SGC personnel handled the transition okay. They’d been out of it. They weren’t responsible for what they’d done while they were drugged. There was a war to fight.

Others were handling the transition poorly, were dispirited or depressed or downright traumatized by what had happened. Anyone who couldn’t keep their head up for the fight was sent to the stockade. Out of sight, out of mind; hopefully out of Hathor’s mind. 

Rodney, who’d once won a Sears Drama Award, was impressed with O’Neill’s ability to act like he was still a loyal First Prime, to wear a neutral expression whenever he was around Hathor and Daniel Jackson. The real test was for the foot soldiers, to see if they could hold it together while pretending to still be loyal Jaffa. 

As the thousand day celebration drew doser, things ramped up. The Flowers were in endless rehearsals, and half the time Evan was needed in the Garden as well, so Rodney and John were left alone in the lab. Because John hadn’t been with the SGC before the Conquering, he didn’t know any of the newly vaccinated SGCI personnel, so he wasn’t as helpful to the recruiting efforts as Evan was. But he had undertaken the most dangerous task up to this point, vaccinating O’Neill without any backup. 

Between Rodney and John alone, the production of Ancient switches was much slower. Once they had individual switches for all the devices at hand, their next project was a master switchboard, so multiple devices could be controlled by a central system. 

“You’ve gotten better at this,” Rodney said. He was soldering components to a switchboard, wielding the iron while John fed in the wire. 

“More practice, now that you aren’t constantly using Evan and the Flowers.” John arched an eyebrow at Rodney, but Rodney knew he wasn’t really jealous. “Why couldn’t the Ancients have used a master frequency when they were so genius and technologically superior?” 

Rodney said, “They probably didn’t bother with one because they didn’t need one. If you can activate the tech with your mind, why bother with a single magic frequency?”

“Let’s not forget the obvious,” Kavanagh said. 

Rodney dropped the soldering iron. John yelped, then stuck his fingers in his mouth. The iron had burnt him. 

“If everything ran on the same frequency, everything would have to turn on at the same time.” Kavanagh stood in the doorway, flanked by two, Jaffa, both of whom were vaccinated and trustworthy. 

Rodney was no military tactician, but even he could see the advantage of having key members of Hathor’s hierarchy guarded by members of the Resistance.

“Except for the part where, with the mental control component, the Ancients could direct one device to turn on but not another,” Rodney said. “Had they contemplated us coming along and trying a to activate their tech without the Gene, maybe they would have built in a master frequency. But I’m sure they weren’t contemplating their total destruction either.” 

“I am not contemplating our total destruction,” Kavanagh said, eyes narrowing.

“You’re just aiding and abetting what someone else has contemplated,” Rodney said. 

“I am loyal to our Goddess,” Kavanagh said, and Rodney realized he’d gone too far. 

Kavanagh gestured at one of the Jaffa. “Break his legs. He doesn’t need them to do science.” 

The Jaffa, a young Marine, hesitated. 

Kavanagh turned to him, frowned. “Jaffa, kree!” 

John punched Kavanagh in the face. 

He howled and hit the floor, hands clapped over his nose, his glasses askew. Blood dripped from between his fingers. 

There was another moment of hesitation, and then the two Jaffa pounced on John.

Rodney couldn't bring himself to watch, turned away. Kavanagh heaved himself to his feet, stumbled and over to the sink. He leaned over it, coughing and spluttering and spitting out blood. 

When he could finally speak with some modicum of dignity, he said, “I will have your heads for this.” 

“No you won’t,” Rodney said. “Because you know you’re not smart enough to do my work, and once I’m gone, you’ll be next. Hathor had to sacrifice O’Neill’s Gene to have the most useful military officer on base as her First Prime, and you need John alive if you want any hope of truly mastering Ancient technology.” 

Kavanagh glowered at Rodney, but he said nothing because Rodney was right. Instead he sharled another  _ Kree! _ at the Jaffa and stormed out of the lab. 

The young Marine was pale, and he mouthed  _ sorry _ at Rodney as he left. Rodney didn’t wait for them to get out of earshot before he ran to John’s side. 

“Come on. We have to get you to Carson.” Rodney helped John to his feet, and together they started for the door. The Jaffa guarding the elevator on their floor were also vaccinated members of the Resistance, and both of them looked concerned at John’s condition before Rodney reminded them to get back into character. A scene only worked if everyone stayed in character. 

“I must take him to the infirmary immediately. Even though he spoke out of turn, he is vital to my research for the Goddess, and I need him functioning again.” 

Both Jaffa managed to adopt passably blank expressions, and one of them summoned the elevator, held it open so Rodney could help John on.

“What the hell were you thinking?” Rodney demanded as soon as the doors slid closed.

“That I needed to redirect Kavanagh’s attention from you and also help those two Jaffa maintain their cover,” John said. “They weren’t idiots. They didn’t hit me in the face, head, or spine, and they pulled a lot of their hits. No real damage. A lot of theater.” He managed a weak smile.

Rodney knew John was in much more pain than he was letting on. “I’m sorry. I wasn't thinking -”

John said, “Kavanagh will be fixated for you and not the rest of us. It’ll be helpful in the long run.” 

In the long run. If they had a long run. 

Carson was alarmed when they entered the infirmary. “What happened?”

Rodney opened his mouth to confess, but all John said was, “Kavanagh.” 

Carson nodded grimly. “Marie will check you over. Chances are all I can offer you is aspirin and send you on your way, but I need to make sure you have no internal bleeding first.”

“Pretty sure I don’t,” John said. “The kids pulled their punches.”

Marie and another nurse had John lay on an exam cot, and they ran some kind of ultrasound on him. 

“It’s my fault,” Rodney said in a low voice. “I mouthed off to Kavanagh. I wasn’t even thinking.” 

Carson's mouth twisted in disapproval. “Rodney, we’re close. We need all the able-bodied combat trained personnel possible.” 

“I know! I just -” 

Carson squeezed his shoulder. “Hold it together as best as you can. I know you’re better than this.” 

Rodney nodded. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, just do better.” Carson squeezed his shoulder one more time, then went to check on a piece of equipment that started beeping. He was still manufacturing Gene therapy doses and Nish’ta vaccines. 

Carson was right. They were so close. They had to hold it together. Every last one of them. 

“You can’t loiter,” Carson said, bustling past with a tray full of vials. “Get back to your work.” 

Always work. The work never ended. Truth was, Kavanagh wasn’t the only one who had collaborated with Hathor. Rodney hadn’t sacrificed other people to save himself, hadn’t painted targets on his colleagues, but he’d done science for the Goddess. The results of his work had been used to subjugate, oppress, and kill other humans, both on Earth and other planets. Unlike O’Neill and the Jaffa, he didn’t have the excuse of having been drugged. 

Carson. Evan. Miko. Even Bill Lee. All of them were collaborators in the end. 

Rodney’s thoughts churned as he headed back to the lab. He owed it to what was left of humanity to do his best to help Carson, Evan, John and O’Neill succeed. And if they failed, Rodney had a pack and supplies. Everyone loyal to Hathor would be focused on the gate. Rodney could slip away, head topside, make the long walk to safety. What were the chances that he’d be able to convince John to go with him? He had enough supplies for the two of them. 

Rodney resumed working on the master switchboard, but it was even slower going when he was working alone. He put on some music to try to drown out his own thoughts. If he was thinking about harmonies, melodies, accidentals, key changes and time signatures, he wasn’t worrying about what would happen during the execution of Carson’s plan. 

How had Carson ever come up with this plan? He was a doctor, not a military strategist. And he was, by training, a geneticist, had been a researcher working in the background on just the Ancient Gene, mapping it studying it, making theories about how the Gene was expressed in the Ancients so they could use their own tech. By all accounts, he’d been pretty removed from the regular goings-on at the SGC, only understood gate travel and the Goa’uld vaguely.

Who was Carson Beckett, that he had become the leader of the Human Resistance? 

No. Rodney had to stop fretting. He had a job to do right now, and he had a job to do later. Right now he was soldering and listening to music. He’d been able to play Liszt and Rachmaninoff once. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d played a piano. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d  _ seen _ a piano. 

The song changed from classical piano concertos to the heavy thumping techno that all the Flowers seemed to like, that they danced to and sang to. Rodney prowled over to his computer and checked the media player. How had everyone else’s music polluted Rodney’s work playlist? Johnny Cash, Joni Mitchell, bands whose names Rodney couldn’t even read - 

Oh. This was it. The guide track to the song the Flowers would be performing when Go Time arrived. Seok had written the song himself, sung all the vocals for the other Flowers to learn their parts. He always laughed when he heard it, because apparently he had a lisp, and while he worked hard to have proper enunciation when he performed, apparently he’d failed for this song. 

Whenever the other Flowers were around when the song came on they would sing along to their parts. Rodney didn’t know why, but he’d been so surprised the first time he heard them sing, that their voices were pretty and radio friendly. There was a certain moment in the song, when everything rose to a crescendo. That was the moment. When Rodney would see what he was really made of.

_’Cause I’m a fighter, fighter_ _  
_ _Soneul deo higher, higher_ _  
_ _I goseun fire, fire_   
_Champion, champion_

Rodney spun around, startled. John stepped into the lab, singing along.

“I have no idea what it means, but I’ve heard it so many times that I can sing along,” John said.

Rodney’s first instinct was to run to him, hug him, but that would probably hurt him.

John crossed the lab, leaned in, pressed a soft kiss to Rodney’s mouth. “Don’t worry. I’ll be fine. Now come on, take a break.”

“A break?” Rodney asked. “Carson said -”

“A break,” John insisted. He reached out, shut off the music.

Then he caught Rodney by the wrist, led him out of the lab, to Rodney’s quarters. Rodney let him lead the way, didn’t even care that it was vaccinated Jaffa who were ostensibly guarding his door.

Once they were inside, the Jaffa didn’t actually lock the door, but for once Rodney wished they had, because he wanted privacy. He crossed the room, stood in front of John. Then he reached out, tugged on the hem of John’s uniform shirt, and John raised his arms obediently, let Rodney peel it off of him.

John stood still and submitted to Rodney’s examination. He catalogued every bump and bruise and scrape, anger boiling in his veins. Damn Kavanagh. Damn Hathor. Damn those meat-headed Marines -

“Hey.” John caught him by the shoulders, shook him gently. “I’m still here. You’re still here. What happened before doesn’t matter. All that matters is what we do going forward. And tonight, I want you to do me.”

He sat down on the edge of the bed, guided Rodney down beside him, and pulled him into a kiss.

What followed was slow and gentle and careful, and even though Rodney had John moaning in pleasure by the end of it, he would always remember the sounds of John in pain, and he promised himself he’d do whatever it took to make sure John never made those sounds again.

*

After that, Rodney and John did their best to keep their heads down. They got the master switchboard completed. Rodney asked for assistance from Im, Heon, Chae, and Seok to move the switchboard to the other end of the lab for the demonstration for Kavanagh. It took the four of them, plus John and Rodney and Evan, to pull off the demonstration, because Kavanagh wanted multiple devices activated at once. The task was simple: all seven of them were assigned to a specific device, and all they had to do was keep track of whether it was “switched” off or on.

The demonstration was a success. Flying colors. Rodney saw the envy - and grudging admiration - in Kavanagh’s eyes.

Kavanagh nodded, said the Goddess would be pleased, and swept out of the room with ill-deserved confidence, because the Jaffa trailing along behind him weren’t loyal to him or the Goddess at all.

The four Flowers bowed to Rodney and departed, chattering amongst themselves, excited about something. They way they kept darting glances at Rodney made him wary, but then Evan said he had to depart, and it was just John and Rodney.

“What’s next?” John asked.

“What’s next is a bigger, more complex Ancient device,” Rodney said. “It’s coming in from Antarctica. It’ll require a master switchboard all its own to work.”

“When does it arrive?”

“Not sure.”

“Any time soon?”

“No,” Rodney admitted. “But tomorrow is our day off, so -”

“So tonight we celebrate this success,” John said. He grabbed Rodney’s hand, led him out the lab and down the corridor to the elevators.

“Isn’t that a bit premature?” Rodney asked.

“Nope. Kavanagh’s celebrating for sure. We get to celebrate as well.” John looked at him and grinned.

They rode down, down, down - to the level where the Garden was. Instead of going in through the main doors, John led Rodney off to the side, to a small room - where Evan, Carson, and Im were waiting, with a veritable feast spread out for them.

“Don’t think we forgot,” Evan said, pulling a chair out for Rodney.

“Forgot what?” Rodney asked.

John sat beside him. “Your birthday.”

What followed was a delicious meal - as best as Evan could manage under their current circumstances - and a breathtaking performance by the Flowers.

All of them were wearing their costumes and fancy makeup. Under the lights the Flowers glowed and sparkled, some as ethereal as angels, others as brilliant as jewels. Rodney had never appreciated that the Flowers were dressed up and made up and styled by painters, but Evan and his crew truly were artists. The exacting synchronization of the dance routines coupled with the intense energy and athleticism of the performances and the vocal acrobatics were awe-inspiring. Rodney almost forgot to eat.

“Dress rehearsal was two nights ago,” Carson said in a low voice. “Tonight is the technical rehearsal. Then the Flowers to have one week to rest up and be in peak condition for their performance. A thousand days is a big deal.”

To whom? Rodney wondered.

John said to Evan, “This food is amazing.”

Evan smiled, pleased. “I’m glad you liked it. Had to do a fair bit of rationing to make sure I had all the necessary ingredients.”

Rodney was impressed, but he also knew Evan could play quite a long game.

“You’ve done a lovely job with them,” Carson murmured, and he reached out, patted Evan’s hand. “I almost don’t recognize them.”

And Rodney remembered that Im, Seok, Heon, and Chae were all up there on that stage, singing and dancing and looking smolderingly sexy.

The show opened with a number that was all of the Flowers, male and female combined. Then the Flowers performed in smaller groups, either all male or all female.

Sometime during the performance a minion cleared away all of the dishes - not a single morsel of food was left behind - and Rodney lost himself in the spectacle.

“Happy birthday to me,” he murmured, and applauded vigorously after a particularly spirited number.

The song sneaked up on him. Rodney had only ever heard the guide track, hadn’t heard the fully produced mix, and his heart crawled into his throat.

Evan leaned in whispered in his ear. “Tonight is our technical rehearsal too. You and John will be sitting four rows back. Hathor and Jackson will be front and center, and O’Neill will be with them. Some lesser Goa’uld will be behind her. Kavanagh and others similarly ranked like Carson will be in the third row. You two should be right behind Carson. I’ll be backstage with the other Flowers and a bunch of vaccinated Jaffa. When you hear the signal, go left. Head for the stage door. Let John and O’Neill do their jobs. Go straight to the end of the corridor. The hatch for the ladders will be unguarded. Stay in the ladder shaft for a full thirty seconds no matter what you hear.”

Evan continued to explain Rodney’s instructions under the cover of the loud music - and the Garden staff and crew shouting and cheering and applauding in lieu of a real audience.

Rodney sat rigid in his chair, eyes wide, heart pounding. But when Even asked, he recited back the salient points. Fourth row, directly behind Carson. Left to the stage door. Down the hall to the ladder shaft. Thirty seconds. To the Flower barracks. Second bunk from the right, bottom bunk. Pack full of weapons. Meet at the ladder shaft at the other end of the hall. Follow the instructions of whoever met him at the hatch.

Evan sat back and applauded after the next number ended, as if nothing strange had happened at all. Rodney darted a glance at John. He was applauding and cheering as well, even threw in a few wolf whistles for good measure. Carson was smiling, pleased, proud, like the Flowers were his own.

When the performance ended, everyone else was on their feet, giving the Flowers a standing ovation. They gathered on the stage to take their bows. They were beaming, breathless and gleaming with sweat, exhausted - and fiercely proud. Rodney had never seen them like that at the end of a performance. Even though he’d only bothered to attend a few, most of them small-scale compared to this, each of them had ended the same, with the Flowers solemn-faced and wilted, bowing to their audience.

Because those performance weren’t real. Those performances were a test, and they had to pass - or lose their lives.

This performance, for their friends and colleagues, teammates and fellow crew members, this was the real thing.

Im, Seok, Heon, and Chae jumped up and down, waving and shouting _Happy Birthday Rodney!_ He forced himself to stand and smile and wave back.

As the applause died down, John reached out, offered his hand to Rodney, his expression solemn but his eyes bright with warmth.

“Happy Birthday, Meredith Rodney McKay,” he said.

Rodney spluttered. “Who told you my real name?”

John smirked. “Who has access to your medical files?”

Rodney turned to Carson. “How could you! On my birthday?”

“Och, Rodney, Meredith is a fine masculine name, very traditionally Welsh.” Carson clapped him on the shoulder, and then he turned to Evan.

John leaned in and whispered, “Let’s go,” and Rodney shivered at the heat and intent in his voice.

He nodded, and together they made their escape, back to Rodney’s quarters.

They tumbled onto Rodney’s bed, kissing and caressing, laughing and breathless. John rolled them so he was on top, started working Rodney’s pants open.

“Today is your birthday,” John said, “so tonight, let me celebrate all of you.” And he lowered his head, nibbled on Rodney’s throat.

Rodney let his head fall back, moaned happily. “Go for it.”

Hours later, breathless and sated, they curled around each other.

“While we were at dinner, Evan told me what I’m supposed to do on the big day,” Rodney said. “Kinda killed the mood. Evan is one giant mood-killer.”

“Evan is kind of - intense,” John admitted. “But he wants you to be ready. Follow his instructions. Do what you’re supposed to do, don’t improvise.”

Rodney rolled onto his side so he could look at John. “Are you ready?”

John nodded. “Yeah. This is what we trained for. This is what we studied. We’re fighting a war, and we’re going to go out there and do what it takes.”

“What do you think it’ll take?”

John turned to look at him. “It’ll take lives. That’s the cost of war. It’s something I know and that Evan and O’Neill and every other airman and Marine and soldier knows. The airmen and privates and corporals - they know that they’re going to lose a friend, a brother, a lover, a soulmate. The sergeants and captains and majors and colonels - they know they’re going to have to sacrifice the men and women they trained with, cared for, worked with, would rather die for. When we hit go time, all bets are off. Hathor is willing to kill us, and we have to be just as willing to kill - and be killed, if it means other, key personnel will survive.”

“That’s - brutal,” Rodney said. It was _wrong._ People were more than machines, than tools, than cogs, where only the working ones were kept and the useless ones were tossed aside.

“There are a hundred Air Force captains who can replace me and Evan,” John said. “But there’s only one of you and Carson and Miko and O’Neill.”

Dread curled low in Rodney’s gut. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”

“I’m saying that humanity’s survival depends a hell of a lot more on you four than it does on me and Evan. Evan and I know that. Evan and I are prepared for that. I need you to be prepared for that too. I think maybe that was what Evan was trying to do for you tonight.” John reached out, curved his hand along Rodney’s jaw. “You’re beautiful, you know that?”

“That’s a non-sequitur,” Rodney protested. He wanted to go back to the part where John was willing to throw his own life away to save Rodney so Rodney could talk him out of that bullshit.

“You know you’re brilliant, a genius, capable of persevering through the harshest of conditions,” John said softly. “But you’re also beautiful. I love the color of your eyes, the shape of your mouth when you smile and frown and speak. I love -”

“John,” Rodney said, desperate. “Please -”

“I love _you,”_ John said. “Today is your birthday, a celebration of the day your life began, of every day you’ve lived since then. I want to celebrate every day that comes after. But there’s a price to be paid for the days that come after, and we have to be ready to pay it.”

“That’s not fair.” Rodney curled his hand around John’s wrist. “You can’t tell me you love me and then in the same breath tell me you’re going to nobly sacrifice yourself for me.”

John curled his fingers through Rodney’s, caught his gaze and held it. “I’m telling you to be prepared to watch the people around you die, some people who are total strangers, some people you know and care about. But you have to keep going forward, understood?”

“I understand,” Rodney said, because he did, intellectually, but he’d be the first to admit that intellect wasn’t everything.

“Good.” John squeezed his hand, smiled, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes.

Rodney added, “I love you too.”

John reeled him in for a slow, soft kiss, and to Rodney it felt like goodbye.

*

Two days before the big thousand-day performance, Kavanagh arrived in the lab.

“Delivery for you.”

Instead of the usual two-Jaffa crew, he had an entire team of them, vaccinated and born alike, pushing a giant box on wheels.

Kavanagh wasn’t smirking, didn’t look smug or angry or otherwise dangerous. He actually looked - excited. The kind of excited Rodney remembered from another lifetime ago, when he was on the brink of discovering something new.

John, who was copying down the latest run of (pointless) formulas on the whiteboard, immediately moved to stand beside Rodney, ready to step in front of him and take a beating for him.

Or worse.

Kavanagh barked out an order that ended in _kree,_ and the Jaffa opened the box.

Inside the box was some kind of silvery throne with a blue hexagonal back piece and a matching hexagonal base.

“What is it?” Rodney asked.

Kavanagh issued another command, and Jaffa scrambled to hook a Goa’uld naquadah generator up to the chair, which was definitely Ancient in design.

“Wait,” Rodney said. “Is that safe?”

But then John went very still beside him.

Rodney tugged on his arm. “What is it?”

“It’s a control chair,” John said. “For -”

“For what?” Rodney pressed.

John’s gaze was distant, like he was listening to faint music drifting in from another room. “Everything.”

“We found it in Antarctica during a naquadah sweep with a ha’tak,” Kavanagh said. “It was inside a mostly-decaying Ancient complex. Teams have been working round the clock to get it unearthed, disconnected, and re-assembled for shipment here. It’s a weapons system. Sheppard, sit in the chair.”

John drifted forward automatically, climbed up onto the platform, and sank down in the chair. It came to life, the blue design lighting up. The chair reclined with John in it.

Kavanagh said, “Captain, think about where we are in the universe.”

A hologram appeared in the air above John, a star map.

John smiled, awed. “I did that.”

And then it disappeared.

Kavanagh said, “I have another team working on a power source for the chair.”

“It just drained an entire naquadah generator after a couple of seconds.” Rodney stared at the chair, skeptical.

It straightened up, and the glow died.

John sighed, slid out of it, shook out his limbs like he was emerging from a daze - or a doze.

“I need you to map it so someone without the Gene can control it,” Kavanagh said.

This was it. Hathor’s big plan. She’d found the Ancient weapon she needed. Now the entire galaxy was doomed.

Rodney nodded numbly, darted a glance at John. They had to tell Carson and Evan and O’Neill.

“Good luck,” Kavanagh said, and he sounded sincere. Then he left the room, and the Jaffa followed.

“Wait,” Rodney said, but it was too late. Who was going to get rid of all the cardboard?

Carson, Evan, and O’Neill weren’t that concerned. Go time was two days from now. Rodney should get started on the machine, because once they were rid of Hathor, that Ancient weapons system would protect Earth from all comers, including other Goa’uld, and maybe Earth would have what it took the rid the galaxy of the Goa’uld once and for all.

After they left - Carson to oversee final preparations in the lab, whatever those were; Evan for final preparations in the Garden; O’Neill back to being faux-First Prime - Rodney turned to John.

“Are _you_ worried?”

“If we don’t succeed, we won’t live to see what she does with it,” John said.

Rodney sighed. “And I thought Evan was a mood-killer.”

“Rodney,” John said, “you were a concert-grade pianist by the time you were twelve, won a Sears Drama Award, have two PhDs, and survived the alien apocalypse. We _will_ succeed.”

“That flyboy cockiness isn’t attractive,” Rodney said, but John had a point.

John leaned in, brushed his lips against Rodney’s. “But you like it when I’m cocky.”

“I just like your cock.”

John burst out laughing.

He didn’t laugh often, but when he did, long and loud and braying like a donkey - Rodney treasured those moments, hoped they’d happen more in the future.

He and John threw themselves into analyzing the Chair, and it was just like old times, scans and x-rays, measurements and more scans, formulas and puzzling.

And then a young Marine Jaffa poked his head into the lab. “The Thousand Day Celebration begins in four hours. The Goddess has graciously granted all her favored servants respite before the show.”

Clean up nice and show up with a smile, she meant.

John inclined his head respectfully, which the Marine looked a little taken aback at for a moment, because John outranked him, but then John said, “We are grateful to the Goddess for her generosity.”

The Jaffa nodded before walking away, head held high, expression Jaffa-blank.

Rodney and John went to their separate quarters to shower and dress their best for putting in an appearance in the garden, and they met up after to have a snack - high-carb, high-protein, high-fuel so as to stave off an adrenaline crash as much as possible, because they were about to face some intense adrenaline highs.

And then it was time to assemble in the Garden.

Rodney stepped through the double doors and headed down the aisles toward the fourth row from the front.

It was called the Garden for a reason, because it literally _was_ a garden, an indoor pleasure palace that was lush lawns, topiary mazes, romantic little nooks beneath climbing rose trellises, koi ponds and graceful weeping willows, all transplanted indoors and kept alive by an army of gardeners and botanists and quite possibly all the sunlamps in the state of Colorado. There were swings and slings hanging from the ceiling, for Flowers to perch on like ornaments - or for other, more hedonistic purposes. There were benches and chaises and even beds, gleaming marble and comfortable canvas and silk sheets strewn with fresh rose petals every day.

And then there was the stage, front and center, with a sparkling fountain as part of the backdrop, trees strung with colored fairy lights, and a carefully-designed wooden floor that was suitable for dancing on.

John and Rodney took their seats. Even though seats were technically a free-for-all, there was a hierarchy as to who got to sit where, and lesser minions wouldn’t try to sit close to the front. Rodney admired the garden, wished he could go and actually smell some roses, because his heart was racing.

John reached out, took Rodney’s hand in his. “Hey, relax.”

“I’m trying.”

“Close your eyes. Breathe deeply.”

Rodney obeyed, and he listened to John breathing beside him, long and slow and deep, and he did his best to cycle his breathing to match John’s, and - yes. Perfect. He was calmer. It was fine. He’d seen the tech rehearsal, which was better than the dress rehearsal. He’d be able to better appreciate the performances.

He opened his eyes.

The person sitting in front of him and John wasn’t Carson.

Alarm coursed through Rodney’s veins. Should he and John move? Should they get the other person to move? Only the other person was higher-ranked than them, had more of Hathor’s favor, had no reason to accede to Rodney’s request that he move, make way for Carson.

Who had less than ten minutes to show up and take his seat.

Rodney looked at John.

John pressed his lips into a thin line, but he made no move to confront the other person.

Rodney darted a glance at the stage door he was supposed to escape through. Could he still make it? It looked like he had a straight shot from here. But was the person in Carson’s seat friend or foe? Would he try to prevent Rodney from leaving?

Three minutes left to go till curtain rise, and Carson finally showed up, all apologies, stepping over people. He glanced back, saw Rodney and John, and then he asked the man sitting right in front of Rodney to shift over - he wanted to sit near his friends.

Relief flooded Rodney’s limbs when the man shifted over obligingly.

Tension curled through him once more when the audience surged to their feet as Hathor arrived on Daniel Jackson’s arm, O’Neill on her left.

All of the Flowers onstage prostrated themselves in obeisance while the audience applauded. Hathor nodded and smiled like a benevolent celebrity queen, and then she took her seat, and everyone else did as well.

The Flowers rose, bowed, and then left the stage.

It was Miko who was acting as MC, who described the milestone they’d reached, a thousand days they’d had the guidance of their radiant goddess Hathor.

Bile rose in Rodney’s throat, but he swallowed it down.

There was more applause and cheers, which Hathor silenced with a single lift of her chin, and then Miko made her bows and left the stage.

Curtains up.

Rodney should have enjoyed the performance. Now that he was watching it a second time, he knew what to look out for - certain bright moments in the music or choreography - and he had the chance to focus on things he hadn’t paid attention to last time, like the harmonies on a particular chorus, but he couldn’t focus on anything.

Because all the energy he’d seen during the technical rehearsal was _gone._ Oh, the Flowers were still energetic, and their dance moves were crisp and clean and smooth and elegant at all the right moments, and their synchronicity was spot-on, but they were - machines. Performing machines. Flowers. Dolls.

They were all dead behind their eyes, and Rodney’s heart broke for them.

And then he heard it, the opening strains of _the_ song.

Fighter.

Beside him, John shifted in his seat.

Rodney didn’t dare look at him.

John had been right before, though - Rodney had heard the song so many times that he almost knew it by heart, could sing along even though he didn’t know what the words meant (save the random snatches of English) about fighting for love, being a champion and a fighter.

After the second chorus, there was a rap break, first Im, then Heon, and then -

Im stood at the front of the stage. “I need to wait for the right moment. Wait - _now!”_

Carson lunged. He swatted Kavanagh aside with a massive punch. O’Neill knocked Jackson aside. He, Carson, and John all converged on Hathor at the same time, needles in hand.

Hathor screamed. The Jaffa standing guard all around the periphery of the Garden surged toward her. Only halfway to her, half of the Jaffa stopped, turned on the others. Fights broke out.

And then Rodney remembered his instructions. He ducked out of the seats and toward the stage door on the left - stage right, he remembered from his high school drama days; why was he remembering this now? - and he tore through the crowd of shouting and screaming Flowers and Garden staff. He ducked into the hallway and dashed down the corridor to where a metal door was, for once, unguarded.

He wrenched it open, flung himself in, yanked it shut after himself.

He counted to thirty. _One-one thousand, two-one thousand, three-one thousand…_

Outside, people screamed. There was automatic weapons fire, staff weapons fire, zat fire, and a familiar humming sound. One of those Goa’uld hand devices. They created bullet-proof shields. They could blast someone into a wall. They could scramble someone’s brain.

The humming sound was coming closer.

Closer.

But Rodney remembered Evan’s instructions.

As soon as he hit _thirty-one thousand_ he bolted up the ladder as fast as he could go, and he reached the floor where the Flower barracks were located (why they weren’t located near the garden was a mystery and also another symptom of Goa’uld stupidity and inefficiency). He opened the metal door and headed out into the corridor, found the Flower barracks.

Two rows in, the bunks on the right, bottom bunk. Weapons. Rodney scooped up the pack. It was filled with pistols, magazine clips, and a whole motherload of knives, many of which looked hand-forged, had paracord wrapped around one end as handles. He was supposed to go back to the door and await instructions.

He started for the door, and a Flower stumbled toward him. She was still wearing her glittery costume, but her hair was messy and her face was bruised - and blood was dripping out of her mouth.

She staggered, and Rodney caught her.

He couldn’t carry her dead weight, and he dragged her into the nearest open room. She ended up half-sprawled across his knees.

“Hey, calm down, it’s okay, I’ll get you to a doctor -”

She died with familiar words on her lips, the same words Min had said when he died, words that Im had written for one of the Flower songs.

 _I’m not kidding, I’ll put my life on the line for you_ _  
_ _I’ll protect you with my life_

The light faded from her eyes, and she was gone.

Dead weight really was _dead weight._

Rodney scrambled away from her, let her fall to the ground. Her blood was on his clothes.

John had warned him. Their plan would cost lives.

Rodney staggered for a far corner, threw up. Then he wiped his mouth, edged past the corpse, and back out to the hallway.

Where a Flower was waiting anxiously by the metal door. As soon as he saw Rodney, he beckoned.

“Come on!”

Rodney followed. He had to follow orders. This was why soldiers followed orders. If lives were going to be lost, he had to disrupt the plan as little as possible, had to trust that O’Neill and Carson and John and Evan had designed the plan to minimize loss of life as much as possible. He had to trust that at least O’Neill and John and Evan knew what they were doing. Rodney had gone to school to learn physics and engineering and science. They’d gone to school to learn the art of war.

The Flower led him through a series of corridors and down staircases and ladders - to a side room where Miko was sitting with a bank of computers and other Flowers guarding her.

Rodney handed over the bag of weapons, and half of the Flowers took knives and guns and ran off to do other things, their radios crackling.

“Rodney,” Miko said. “I’ve got the gate. I need you to control essential building systems so we can contain the enemy as much as possible.” She pointed to one of the other computers.

Rodney sat down, scanned the readouts on the display. He had security camera feed for the entire base, audio and video.

“Make sure Sheppard and Lorne get Hathor to the gate.”

Sheppard and Lorne?

John and Evan, Rodney realized as soon as he saw them both on one of the monitors, Evan with an unconscious-seeming Hathor slung over his shoulder in a fireman’s hold - for a moment Rodney hadn’t been sure it was her, because they’d covered her gaudy outfit with a blanket - and John with him, armed with an assault rifle, a pistol, a knife, and a zat.

Rodney scanned the feeds of the surrounding corridors near their position - and he closed a fire suppression door when a bunch of born Jaffa started toward them.

It was like an old video game, opening and closing doors to guide the on-screen characters to their destination, except it was very much not a game, because one time Rodney closed a door - and trapped a bunch of white-clad, unarmed minions in the same stretch of corridor of some born Jaffa.

The minions died quickly and brutally.

“Miko,” Rodney said, horrified.

She didn’t even look at him. “Are they at the gate room yet?”

“Not yet, but -”

“The wormhole only stays active for thirty-eight minutes,” Miko said. “I won’t fire it up till Sheppard and Lorne are close.”

She called them Sheppard and Lorne because to her they were soldiers - airmen. They weren’t friends or lovers. They were just other cogs in the machine of resistance, rebellion, revolution.

Rodney gritted his teeth and did what he had to to get John and Evan to the gate room. If he closed a hallway or locked a room, he simply shut down the feed to that space so he didn’t see what came after. He couldn’t afford the distraction. He had a job. They all had jobs.

The gate room was heavily guarded when John and Evan arrived. Rodney’s heart crawled into his throat. But then he saw the Flowers he’d brought weapons to come pouring into the hallways surrounding the gate room, vaccinated Jaffa on their heels. Rodney override the security locks on the gate room and the control room, also overrode the security locks on the blast doors that protected the control room.

The gate room opened. The blast doors opened. The gate room was filled with Jaffa.

It was John who took command. He shouted orders, and Rodney watched, numb, as the Flowers and vaccinated Jaffa spread out into some kind of battle formation.

The Flowers went first. Cannon fodder. Drew the enemy fire from the Jaffa in the gate room and the control room while vaccinated Jaffa surged behind them. They took the control room, and then they were able to rain destruction down on the Jaffa in the gate room.

More vaccinated Jaffa filled the gate room, and this was it. The plan going to work. Everyone’s hard work and sacrifices were going to pay off. Evan and John dragged a struggling Hathor toward the gate ramp.

And then Evan went flying, hit the wall like he’d been swatted by a giant hand. John followed a moment later.

Kavanagh strode into the gate room, one hand outstretched. Only his eyes were glowing and he was wielding a hand device.

He was a Goa’uld? Since when?

Vaccinated Jaffa rained bullets down on him, but none of them penetrated his shield.

And then Im - who’d somehow survived when all the other Flowers had died - lunged at Kavanagh. Threw his knife.

It caught Kavanagh in the side of the throat.

Kavanagh’s eyes flared, and his hand device roared.

Im hit the wall with a sickening crunch.

Kavanagh turned, knelt, scooped Hathor into his arms in a grotesque parody of newlyweds. Blood dripped down his neck, stained his arm and shoulder.

Kavanagh hauled her to her feet, supporting her weight, and started to hobble toward the doors. Then the glow in his eyes faded, and he stopped, swayed on his feet. Hathor, slumped against him, struggled weakly as he started up the gate ramp once more.

He pulled her toward the gate, and she batted at him ineffectually, trying to get him to let her go.

Then Kavanagh looked right at one of the security cameras and said, “Miko, dial the gate!”

Rodney watched the chevrons light up, watched the inner ring spin, first slow, then faster, then faster. Chevron one, encoded. Chevron two, encoded.

Hathor screamed, “Kneel before your goddess!”

Chevron three, encoded. Chevron four, encoded. Chevron five, encoded.

Light flared in Kavanagh’s eyes. He said, “My queen,” and started to kneel.

Chevron six, encoded.

Hathor smiled.

Chevron seven, locked.

The wormhole initiated.

Kavanagh and Hathor disappeared in a blast of water.

When the wormhole stabilized, both of them were gone.

Destroyed.

Dead.

It was over.

It wasn’t over.

Evan was kneeling at the base of the wall, cradling Im’s body and sobbing.

John, clutching his ribs, heaved himself to his feet. He accepted a radio from a vaccinated Jaffa.

“Colonel O’Neill, sir, Tango has been neutralized. Initiating clean-up sweep.”

Miko said to Rodney, “Go through the security feeds. Start sweeping the Jaffa and other loyal servants into a contained space. We need to capture the last of the Goa’uld.”

Rodney nodded. “Roger that.”

*

In the days that followed, there were two teams: one gathering the dead and sorting them into loyalists and traitors, cleaning up the destruction; the other gathering the survivors, scanning all non-Jaffa for symbiotes in the infirmary, and sending all vaccinated Jaffa for a nap in the sarcophagus once the juvenile symbiotes were removed and destroyed.

All told, there were more casualties than survivors, but the survivors had prevailed.

At such a huge cost.

Rodney was helping Carson in the infirmary, because if he could use a supercollider he could be trusted to use an MRI to look for Goa’uld symbiotes. John and Evan were part of the clean-up crew, though. Apparently Evan had once been one of the logistics officers on the base, knew the place inside and out, could organize manpower nonpareil, and the officers trusted John after he’d led them through the heart of the battle for Earth’s freedom.

Most of the casualties had been minions and Flowers, were laid out in the Garden, a sea of black and white bloodstained uniforms, felled chess pieces, scattered _go_ stones.

It was a broken and hollow Daniel Jackson who followed O’Neill around, a pale shadow. The Nish’ta vaccine hadn’t worked on him with a single dose, and over the course of a few days he’d been dosed again and again. Rodney had overheard what sounded like vicious withdrawals, Jackson screaming and crying, terrified and furious, hallucinating and fighting.

But he’d gotten onto the radio and started sending out the message in every language he knew: Earth was free.

Miko was the one who figured out how to broadcast the footage of Hathor being destroyed when the gate opened, and after she sent that out, the Jaffa manning outposts in other locations were overwhelmed and destroyed.

Rodney barely slept, and when he did, he was usually alone, though he did have vague recollections of John crawling into bed beside him one night.

A week after The Battle for Earth, Rodney’s stint in the infirmary was over. No more snakeheads. All former Jaffa cured. He stood in the kitchen, fixing himself a sandwich. He missed Evan’s cute lunches. He wondered if he could figure out how to cut an apple to look like rabbits.

John appeared in the doorway. He looked exhausted, pale, shadows around his eyes. He crossed the kitchen, went to wash his hands.

“Sometimes I’m afraid it’ll never come off,” he said.

He was washing blood off his hands.

Rodney set down his bread knife, went to stand beside John. “We did what we had to.”

“I know. Doesn’t mean I’ll sleep well at night.”

“As long as you’re sleeping beside me, you can toss and turn and steal the blankets all you want,” Rodney said.

John looked at him. “You know I’m Captain Sheppard again, right?”

“So?”

“So - I’m an officer again. I have rules I have to follow -”

“You always were an officer,” Rodney said. “That’s why you were able to do what had to be done. But things aren’t going to go back the way they were.”

“O’Neill’s talking about re-establishing the SGC, building gate teams again. To rescue any of our people who were sent offworld as slaves,” John said.

That wasn’t a bad idea. “What about tech teams? So we can copy Thor’s Hammer and install one for our gate.”

“Miko’s going to be on the new SG-1 as the scientist. O’Neill wants me to command it. He wants Seok as our linguist and military back-up. I’ll probably take a Marine as some muscle, too. Evan’s going to command SG-2. He’ll be needing a scientist.” John looked at him.

Rodney looked back at him. “So there will be gate teams again. Things still won’t be the same. Before Hathor, Seok never would have been on our team. You’d never consider me for a team. Why not your team?”

“If you’re on my team, I’m more or less your CO. Even if DADT is gone, there are still frat regs.”

“You think DADT will be gone?” Rodney asked.

“Did you know the military used to select _for_ colorblind men for certain missions? Because cammo doesn’t fool them like it does the rest of us,” John said.

“That’s a non-sequitur,” Rodney said slowly.

John shook his head. “The new SGC will be selecting for gay and bi men and straight women. Apparently Nish’ta is a strictly Goa’uld queen thing.”

“Then why were you getting all grim about being Captain Sheppard again?” Rodney eyed him, wary.

“Because, as an officer, I’m supposed to be an officer and a gentleman.” John straightened up. “If I’m going to be a gentleman, I should make an honest man of you, and besides - officers marry to advance.”

Rodney stared at him. “You mean you want to marry me so you can become Major Sheppard?”

John said, “I want to marry you because I love you.”

“But you just said -”

“Marry me, Rodney McKay?”

Rodney looked at him for a long time. They’d just survived hell together. As hopeful as everyone else was, they were now without a System Lord, and the other System Lords who Hathor had pissed off were going to come looking to take her territory for themselves. The war wasn’t over. It had just begun.

But Rodney had survived, and he’d done it with John.

“Yes,” he said. Then he reached out, scooped up a bottle of WD-40. “Here. This’ll help you get the blood off.”

John accepted the bottle and set about scrubbing his hands. He dried them on a clean but worn rag, and then he reached out and pulled Rodney into a kiss.

“C’mon,” John said, after he pulled back. “Let’s go to bed.”

**Author's Note:**

> So much gratitude for the impeccable Brumeier for her beta assistance, and for her and Sherlockian Syndromes for helping me get this story across the finish line. For whatever reason it was difficult to write, but they didn't let me give up, gave me encouragement and support all the way through.
> 
> Title from the a poem version of the song Koeeoaddi There by The Incredible String Band.
> 
> Song lyrics from All In and Fighter by Monsta X.


End file.
